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journey to the east




Journey to the East
F
The Jesuit Mission to China,
1579–1724
Liam Matthew Brockey
the belknap press of
harvard university press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England




For J.S.A.E.




Contents
Preface
ix
Note on Translations and Orthography
xi
Introduction
1
part i
Charting the Course
1
An Uneasy Foothold
25
2
In the Shadow of Greatness
57
3
Witnesses to Armageddon
92
4
The Problem of Success
125
5
Between Tolerance and the Intolerable
164
part ii
Building the Church
6
In the Apostles’ Classroom
207
7
Learning the Language of Birds
243
8
The Business of Conversion
287
9
A Good Method and Order
328
10
Brothers of Passion and Mercy
366
Conclusion
403
Bibliographic Note
423
Notes
427
Illustration Credits
479
Index
481




Preface
Like the chain of events recounted in the chapters that follow, this book
started with a journey. But in contrast to the voyages of missionaries four
centuries ago, mine was a journey to the West. Although I did not know
at the time what my future would hold, I first began to think about the
China Jesuits at the old Imperial Observatory in Peking in 1996, when I
stood before a statue of Matteo Ricci. I had visited the ruins of St. Paul’s
at Macau only weeks before but had not made the connection between
the two places. It was not until a few years later in Portugal that I would
return to thinking about missionaries in East Asia. By that time it was no
coincidence that I turned up traces of Ricci and his colleagues. Over the
past several years I have traveled far to uncover evidence relating to their
story, and I have incurred many debts of gratitude along the way that I
would like to repay here.
This book first took shape under the careful guidance of Philip Bene-
dict of Brown University. Diogo Curto and Jerome Grieder also provided
invaluable assistance. My colleagues Huihung Chen, Henrique Leitão,
and Joshua Zeitz all lent their support to this project at that early stage.
Since coming to Princeton I have received assistance from several col-
leagues in the History Department. In particular, I thank Peter Brown,
Bob Darnton, Nicola Di Cosmo, Ben Elman, Tony Grafton, Martin
Heijdra, Bill Jordan, Peter Lake, Philip Morgan, Sue Naquin, Willard Pe-
terson, Ted Rabb, and Peter Silver for their insights and encouragement.
Others beyond New Jersey also offered their expertise, especially Ad


Dudink, Noël Golvers, Ronnie Hsia, Tom McCoog, Eugenio Menegon,
Ken Mills, John Russell-Wood, Nicolas Standaert, and Ines Øupanov. Yet
I made no greater friend on this journey than Jurgis Elisonas, whose aca-
demic rigor is surpassed only by his warmth. It was he who read draft after
draft of this book, never ceasing to improve my writing and analysis, and
so I dedicate it to him in friendship.
Over the years I have tried the patience of numerous archivists and li-
brarians. I am grateful to two of them in particular, Dra. Conceição
Geada of the Biblioteca da Ajuda in Lisbon and Father Thomas Reddy of
the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu. Without the help of Dra. Con-
ceição, I might never have learned to read the Jesuits’ handwriting during
my first months at Ajuda. And without Father Reddy’s generosity and as-
sistance, I would have had to spend far longer in the Eternal City than I
did. Of course, I never would have visited either place if not for the foun-
dations that sponsored my research. I thank the Instituto Cultural de
Macau and the Fulbright Program for the grants that I received for study
in Portugal and Italy. I am also grateful for a series of grants given to me
by the University Committee on Research in the Humanities and Social
Sciences at Princeton. Most important, I must thank Luís dos Santos
Ferro and the Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento for
their unfailing support of my research.
It is a tiring business keeping one’s focus trained on a single subject for
years at a stretch. I doubt that I would have been able to summon the en-
durance needed for this project if not for the loving support of my family
in America and in Portugal. My wife, Mónica, has been my most careful
and discerning editor, reading every line of this book in its formative and
its final stages. With her company, and that of our children, Beatriz and
Leonor, this journey has been a pleasant one. My only regret is that my
friend and mother-in-law, Maria do Céu, passed away before seeing this
book published. It was in her house that I learned Portuguese and that I
wrote the pages that follow, looking out from her patio over the rooftops
of Lisbon. From that inspirational perch I could see a blue sliver of the
Tagus River, where the India fleets once lay at anchor awaiting their turn
to make a journey to the East.
x
E Preface


Note on Translations
and Orthography
This book is based on archival and published materials in several lan-
guages, including Portuguese, Latin, Spanish, Italian, French, and Chi-
nese. All translations into English were done or commissioned by the
author, who alone accepts responsibility for any inaccuracies. Quota-
tions from the Latin Vulgate Bible have been rendered into English using
the Rheims-Challoner translation (Baltimore, 1899). I have attempted to
standardize the spelling of the names of the European and Asian protago-
nists in this study. As a general rule, first names are indicated according
to the modern spelling in each individual’s native tongue (such as Matteo
for Mateus, or João for Joam). I have made an effort to respect the con-
temporary spelling of surnames as indicated by each individual writing in
his own language (such as Ricci instead of Rixio, or Gouvea instead of
Gouveia). There are, however, a number of instances in which the indi-
viduals in question did not write their names in a consistent fashion or
else used abbreviations. In these cases, the most appropriate form of the
name has been selected in light of the individual’s native tongue (such as
Alfonso Vagnone for Affonso Vanhoni and João Rodrigues for Joam
RÇ
¯Åz). Chinese terms and the names of Chinese individuals are given in
pinyin romanization. Since Portuguese was the lingua franca of the China
Jesuits, the baptismal names they gave to Chinese men and women are
provided in that language (such as Paulo Xu Guangqi or Miguel Yang


Tingyun). The standard reference employed for names, as well as dates
and other biographical information, is Joseph Dehergne, Répertoire des
Jésuites de Chine de 1552 à 1800 (Rome and Paris, 1973). Readers should be
aware that the French- or Latin-based spellings of Portuguese, Spanish,
and Italian names found in Louis Pfister, Notices Biographiques et
Bibliographiques sur les Jésuites de l’Ancienne Mission de Chine, 2 vols.
(Shanghai, 1932–1934), are thoroughly outdated. I have chosen to use
some more recognizable forms of Chinese place-names (such as Peking
and Canton) for ease of readability. The names of most of the places
within China mentioned here, however, appear in pinyin romanization.
xii
E Note on Translations and Orthography


journey to the east




Introduction
As night fell on December 2, 1621, a solemn procession wound its way
through the streets of Macau, a Portuguese enclave on the southernmost
extremity of the Chinese mainland. It was the eve of the feast of Francis
Xavier, the recently beatified Jesuit priest who had been the first European
since the Middle Ages to attempt spreading the Christian message among
the peoples of East Asia.
In the two weeks leading up to the anniversary of his death, the city
had conducted lavish celebrations in his honor. They began with the
sounds of blaring trumpets, pealing bells, and exploding fireworks, while
a banner bearing the future saint’s likeness was raised in front of the
church of São Paulo, the sanctuary at the headquarters of the missions of
the Society of Jesus in Japan and China. These celebrations culminated
with the procession that proclaimed Xavier Macau’s new patron. Carrying
a silver reliquary case containing one of the missionary’s arm bones,
Bishop Diogo Correa Valente led a train of priests, friars, local nobles, and
other laymen through streets bedecked with flags and tapestries. Singing
children followed close behind, escorting carriages that portrayed Xavier’s
virtues. The procession paused at impromptu theaters erected in squares
where students of the Jesuit college reenacted episodes from his life. On
one of these stages China appeared in the company of Shangchuan Island.
The great Ming empire was regally dressed, her clothes adorned with gold
and silver ornaments and precious stones, yet she bore a lament in her
mouth. She complained bitterly that when Blessed Francis Xavier stood


before her gates, bearing a treasure greater than all others, she had obsti-
nately refused him entry. By contrast, the humble island reveled in the
fact that the Apostle of the Orient had passed on to greater glory in a hut
on one of his beaches. As Shangchuan exhorted his shepherds and their
flocks to dance and sing praises in the flickering light of torches and lumi-
naries, China was left with her empty riches to weep at her misfortune.1
Francis Xavier had died sixty-nine years earlier, in 1552, not far from the
site of this commemorative procession. He was born in Spanish Navarre
into the lower ranks of the Basque nobility in 1506 and spent part of his
formative years at the University of Paris. While studying at the French
capital, he met Ignatius Loyola and joined the group that would become
recognized by the papacy in 1540 as the Society of Jesus. Soon after that,
he embarked for Asia at the behest of King João III of Portugal. As the
first overseas missionary of a dynamic young religious order, Xavier repre-
sented a new breed in contemporary Catholicism—the aggressive seeker
of gentile souls to baptize, the energetic laborer in the “vineyard of the
Lord.” Following in the steps of the colonists, traders, and soldiers who
had built the fortresses and trading entrepôts that constituted the Portu-
guese Estado da Índia, Xavier spent ten years shuttling across Maritime
Asia between India, Southeast Asia, and Japan attempting to open new
mission fields.
During his travels in Asia, Xavier benefited from the presence of other
Europeans, who gave him crucial protection and support, and the interest
of numerous local intermediaries, who at least gave the appearance of un-
derstanding his religious motivations. But these individuals merely helped
him over the first hurdles in his race for a heavenly prize. The evangelic
conquests sought by Xavier lay beyond the new hybrid worlds established
by the Portuguese in their coastal settlements; he aimed at the heart of the
kingdoms and empires of Asia. By his own optimistic reckoning, the mis-
sions he had started on the Malabar and Fishery coasts, in the Moluccas
and Malacca, and on Honshu and Kyushu had all made inroads for the
implantation of the Catholic faith into indigenous cultures. Yet according
to the hagiographical tradition that was later constructed about his apos-
tolic endeavors, Xavier died with his greatest prize just out of reach when
he expired on Shangchuan Island right outside the gates of the Ming em-
pire. The challenge of establishing a mission in the cultural heart of East
Asia lay before those who would respond to his call for missionaries from
Europe. The story of the men who picked up the standard of the Apostle
2
E Introduction


of the Orient and pursued the enterprise in China that he had only imag-
ined is the subject of this book.
As Francis Xavier’s reputation for holiness and missionary vigor was
completing its spread from Portuguese Asia to the last corner of Catholic
Europe in the late sixteenth century, one of the greatest works of Chinese
literature was being produced. Journey to the West, or Xiyou ji, a prose mas-
terpiece derived from centennial folk traditions, was first printed in 1592.
It is a book of disputed authorship, most frequently attributed to Wu
Cheng’en (ca. 1500–1582), a minor scholar-official with a taste for the su-
pernatural. The plot reworks the historical journey made by Xuanzang, a
seventh-century monk, to India in order to acquire the Buddhist scrip-
ture, elaborating on the trials undergone by a group of adventurers to
bring a foreign religion to China. What rendered this tale so compelling
to the generations of storytellers who had passed it on, embellished it, and
made it an appropriate subject for a former mandarin to write down was
that it combined adventure and religion in epic fashion set against the
boundless landscapes of Inner Asia.
In Journey to the West, Xuanzang must travel across deserts and moun-
tain ranges, confront the perils of the fabulous and the unknown, and de-
feat monstrous foes on his way to far-distant India. The perilous road
trodden by this seeker allegorically represents the Buddhist path to en-
lightenment.2 Fortunately for Xuanzang, he is escorted and protected
from harm by three companions with supernatural powers, of whom the
best known is the monkey Sun Wukong. While the religious quest of the
wandering monk provides the central motif of the fabled journey, the tale
of the monkey with his extraordinary ingenuity and wit has made this one
of the canonical works of Chinese fiction. Coincidentally, the supposed
author of Journey to the West died in the same year that Francis Xavier’s
missionary successors acquired their first residence within the Ming em-
pire.
At first sight, no analogies appear between the late Ming period’s Jour-
ney to the West and the story of the Jesuit mission to China as it is told
here. After all, no parallels are drawn between the founder of the mission,
Matteo Ricci, and Pigsy, the voracious pig, in the account that follows;
the dispositions of the missionary-astronomer Ferdinand Verbiest and the
monk Sandy are not subjected to comparison. Important elements of the
Ming tale do, however, resonate clearly with the central themes of this
book. In both cases, the sequence of events features dramatic actions lead-
3
Introduction F


ing to the introduction of a new religious tradition into the Chinese social
and cultural context; attention is drawn to the challenges faced by indi-
viduals as they traveled vast distances and tried to equip themselves with
the tools required for making sense of the complexities of a civilization
radically different from their own.
It is the adventurous progress of the Jesuits’ journey to the East, rather
than the content of the religious dogma transmitted by them, that forms
the core of this work. The peril of travel in the premodern world, the dan-
ger of entering a foreign land alone and unarmed, the difficulty of van-
quishing the real or imagined foes who stood in the way, and the chal-
lenge of understanding a wholly unfamiliar culture constitute episodes of
high drama in a script that includes several reversals of fortune for its pro-
tagonists. But unlike Journey to the West, this account of the China Jesuits
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is not a fairy tale. It should not
be confused with the familiar Western story which treats the Jesuits’ mis-
sion as an epic encounter between East and West. Not all adventures are
epics, and the fate of the Society of Jesus in late imperial China is not told
here in either heroic or hagiographic terms.
This book is about a handful of missionaries who believed that they
could, with little more than firm conviction and divine assistance, convert
the Chinese to Christianity. Its main characters are Jesuit priests and
brothers, as well as indigenous men and women who became Christians
(and whose numbers reached 200,000 by 1700). These figures are set
against such diverse backdrops as the imperial court at Peking, the dusty
villages of Shanxi Province, the bustling cities of the Yangzi delta region,
and the mountain hamlets of Fujian. But their gestures reach across conti-
nents and at times the action takes place far beyond the confines of
China. It moves over thousands of miles and years of travel from the
headquarters of the Society of Jesus in Rome to the order’s colleges in Por-
tugal and onward to the missionaries’ staging posts at Goa and Macau.
The story begins in this European settlement on the rim of the Ming em-
pire in 1579, where the first Jesuit set about studying the Chinese lan-
guage. As it progresses over the span of the seventeenth century, the mis-
sionaries establish a network of residences and Christian communities
across China. It ends when, after sustaining a sprawling enterprise for over
a century, the missionaries’ efforts were fatally checked by the combina-
tion of a disastrous visit by a papal envoy to Peking in 1705 and the pro-
scription of Christianity in China by imperial fiat nearly two decades later.
4
E Introduction


The story of the China Jesuits’ enterprise is no simple tale of rise and
fall. A complex set of factors, born of both European and Chinese circum-
stances, was behind the vicissitudes of the missionaries’ fortunes, and this
book explores a considerable variety of political, cultural, and scientific
encounters. Given the complexities of the subject, an author must choose.
I have accorded pride of place here to an examination of the religious
practices that the Jesuits imported into Chinese society and an inspection
of the forms that Christianity acquired in that context. At the broadest
level, this study traces the development of a mission church, that is, the
collectivity of Christian communities created under the Jesuits’ auspices
and sustained through their pastoral efforts. I discuss the missionaries’
strategies for proselytizing in China, the techniques they relied on to
group together the individuals who submitted to baptism, and the meth-
ods they used to foster spiritual progress among Chinese Catholics. The
book therefore tells the story of the mission church “from the ground up.”
The Jesuit mission to China is deliberately treated here as a component
of early modern Catholicism. This sweeping notion encompasses the par-
allel, complementary, and at times contradictory strands of individual
piety, group devotion, and institutional development that characterized
Catholic Christianity as a whole from the sixteenth to the eighteenth cen-
turies.3 The China mission was not some exotic experiment cut off from
the rest of the world. The priests who traveled to China were full mem-
bers of a religious culture, and their work in Asia bore the mark of their
European academic, devotional, and social backgrounds. In short, al-
though the events discussed here took place in China, they are part of a
larger European story about Catholicism. While the Jesuits were busy
bringing this complex of religious doctrines, attitudes, and institutions to
China, Catholicism was being transformed by various political and social
forces in Europe. The panorama of Catholic culture changed greatly dur-
ing the mission’s span, between the 1580s and the 1720s; consider that this
enterprise, begun during the age of Luis de Granada and Philip II, ended
shortly after that of Bossuet and Louis XIV. It is therefore not surprising
that as generation after generation of missionaries journeyed to Asia, the
cultural baggage they carried with them shifted along with movements
within the Roman Church and Europe itself.4
For this reason, this is also a book about religion in early modern Eu-
rope. For as one looks through the prism of the China mission, certain
hues on the wide spectrum of Catholic experience in that period appear
with remarkable clarity. At one end lies the devotional dynamism of the
5
Introduction F


sixteenth century in southern Europe that sparked the creation of institu-
tions such as the Society of Jesus and initiated a burst of activities includ-
ing the overseas missions. In the middle of the spectrum lie the varieties of
regional and national Catholic practice which, when mixed with the
strong corporate identity of the Society of Jesus, helped shape the atti-
tudes of the missionary priests. And at the far end appears the repressive
force of the institutional church, born of the Counter-Reformation and
intent on imposing orthodoxy and asserting papal primacy. Eventually, it
is this force that would be brought to bear against the China Jesuits. So
the most distant (and, in many ways, the most revealing) mirror of early
modern Catholicism was to be found at the farthest fringe of the Catholic
world, among the missionaries and their Chinese Christians.
The Society’s China enterprise had its genesis in the general reinvigora-
tion of piety in southern Europe at the start of the early modern period.
Often called the Catholic Reformation, this movement originated in Italy
and Iberia, where reforming bishops, observant nuns and friars, and male
and female mystics began to change the tenor of religious life. The Society
of Jesus itself emerged from this trend in spiritual renewal, springing from
the personal charisma and organizational genius of a Basque nobleman,
Ignatius Loyola. The order’s exponential increase in membership—from
the original band of ten at its founding in 1540 to almost a thousand by
the time of Loyola’s death sixteen years later, and five times that number
by 1580—is a testament to the magnetism that its vocation and character
had on contemporary men.5 These first Jesuits enabled the Society to es-
tablish itself across Catholic Europe. And, riding on the crest of the Span-
ish and Portuguese expansion to Africa, Asia, and the Americas, some of
this burgeoning number of priests and brothers opened residences in the
new colonial cities. It was from vantage points such as Macau that the
men of the Society looked out beyond the boundaries of empire and con-
templated expanding Catholic Christendom by claiming conversions.
If one kind of zeal powered the Society’s drive to establish residences
throughout Europe and its empires, it took a different degree of pious
commitment to launch missionary efforts in non-Christian lands. The
China Jesuits were motivated by a firm belief in the universal applicability
of Christian teaching and by a conviction that the Christian language had
an elasticity that permitted it to conform to the contours of even the most
widely disparate cultures. In contrast to the worldly pretensions of secular
agents of empire, such as merchants and mercenaries, the missionaries’
6
E Introduction


spiritual ambitions knew few limits. Indeed, many of the Jesuits headed
for Asia with the express goal of earning their passage to paradise through
martyrdom. The men who requested missionary assignments in China
were well aware that they would have to carry out their apostolic activities
without the protection of colonial arms and that no coercive force would
come to their aid in the face of indigenous hostility. Once they sailed up
the Pearl River toward Canton and points north, they knew that the only
discernible prize they could hope for beyond their satisfaction at occa-
sioning conversions was the recognition they might gain from mandarins
and emperors. Moreover, the Chinese Christians, the treasured rewards of
the missionaries’ efforts, had to remain in their home locales; they could
not be transported overseas like spices or bullion. It would thus appear
that the lure of souls was stronger for some Europeans than the scent of
gold.
The missionary fervor that flourished among the Jesuits during the
Catholic Reformation did not result, however, in scattershot attempts at
evangelization. It was tempered by long reflection on proselytizing strate-
gies and years of academic training, two legacies of the Society’s twin vo-
cations for missions and education. By the time Jesuit priests entered
China, their order had developed effective techniques for conducting mis-
sionary work that aimed at sparking a renewal of popular piety in Eu-
rope.6 To be sure, the Society’s techniques built on the models created
by older religious orders, such as the Franciscans and Dominicans, and
served to channel their pastoral energy toward teaching doctrine, preach-
ing sermons, hearing confessions, and seeking to reconcile feuding parties.
From the sixteenth century until the eighteenth, itinerant Jesuits traveled
to cities and towns across Europe exercising a vocation that combined
rhetoric, theatricality, casuistry, personal fortitude, and, for its most re-
nowned practitioners, the odor of sanctity. Although the young men who
were sent to Asia are unlikely to have had much personal experience as
missionaries, they were certainly aware of how their older confreres con-
ducted their missions in Europe.7 The pastoral efforts of the China Jesuits
were therefore an exercise in emulation. In that sense the scattered com-
munities of Chinese Christians were vivid patches of baroque piety set in
a vast and largely indifferent land.
Education was also a major factor in shaping the Jesuits’ missionary ef-
forts. The order was heir to the tradition of piety and scholarship, known
as Christian humanism, which had flourished since the late fifteenth cen-
7
Introduction F


tury, and it placed considerable emphasis on the academic formation of its
members. By the time the China mission began in the 1580s, the Society
had started a program for standardizing the methods that were used in its
schools for teaching grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, and theology. With
the exception of the very first missionaries, most of the China Jesuits
passed through this uniform academic program twice, first as students
and later as teachers. The communal life of the men of the Society of Jesus
in their colleges was therefore as much a life of the mind as a life of the
spirit.8 Their academic habits would be crucial in China, where the Jesuits
faced the challenge of being the first Europeans to attempt to understand
the Chinese language as well as Confucian philosophy. The study of na-
tive traditions, they knew, was essential for making their religious message
fit into the Chinese cultural register. But knowledge was not all. With-
out rhetorical skills and a predisposition for debate—further legacies of
their academic training—how could the Jesuits have hoped to convince
the Chinese of the validity of Christian doctrine? After all, one of the
first lessons they learned in China was that the keys to the gates of social
legitimacy remained firmly in the hands of mandarins, men who had
gained powerful positions within the state bureaucracy by virtue of being
learned. Yet this book moves the Jesuits past that barrier and relates their
actions beyond elite circles in the realms of Chinese society where they
found willing converts.
Many of the high contrasts across the spectrum of early modern Catholi-
cism that become visible through the prism of the China mission are
caused by the tension between two factors: the corporate identity of the
Society of Jesus and the variations in regional and national religious prac-
tices. Like other religious orders of the early modern period, the Jesuits
had a very strong sense of group cohesion—although to a far lesser degree
than the oft-repeated clichés depicting the Society as a “military-styled or-
der” that served as the “shock troops of the Counter-Reformation” might
suggest.9 Because of the individual charisma of its members and the or-
der’s institutional character, not to mention the sheer number of Jesuits,
the Society stood out among the panoply of other Catholic groups. More-
over, the fact that the Society was founded at a time of spiritual renewal,
when older orders were seeking to redefine their specific vocations, gave
the Jesuits an added impulse to insist on what they called “our way of pro-
ceeding.” The use of common vows, procedures of governance, educa-
8
E Introduction


tional norms, devotions, and pastoral practices all contributed to forging
the Society’s institutional identity. These shared habits were especially
meaningful for the Jesuits, since, in contrast to monastic religious orders,
their activities were not dominated by communal prayer routines and
their range of movement was not restricted to the confines of their resi-
dences. If an adherence to the Society’s customs was important for its
members in Europe, so much more so was it in China, where, scattered in
cities hundreds of miles apart, priests often lived alone or in the company
of only one or two other men.
It bears repeating that the Society of Jesus was an international religious
order. It had colleges and residences throughout the vast space identified
with the Roman Church and in lands that were predominantly Protestant
and Orthodox as well. As a consequence there was also a wide variety of
nationalities represented in the order’s membership. Just like the Society
itself, the China mission drew on a multinational recruitment pool for its
priests and brothers. The largest fraction of Jesuits in East Asia was from
Portugal, with Italy and the Southern Netherlands supplying significant
numbers of men as well. But in contrast to many other missions, the
ranks of the China Jesuits were very diverse in terms of national origin.
Their priests and brothers hailed from places as distant from each other as
Lombardy and Lithuania or Castile and Croatia. This diversity made the
Society’s corporate unity doubly important, because outside their institu-
tional identity and shared vows of obedience there was little to bond the
missionaries together across the vast expanses of Chinese territory that
separated them. It also meant that the China Jesuits did not share a politi-
cal loyalty—despite their nominal allegiance to the king of Portugal, the
patron of their mission, and the emperor of China, the direct master of
those who served at Peking—a factor which might have stimulated what
contemporaries considered a natural sense of unity.
There is a stubborn (often polemical) scholarly custom of ascribing an
ironclad uniformity to the structures of the Roman Church. Yet not all
bishoprics and cardinalates, much less parishes, were created equal. In
actuality, local traditions of piety and political prerogatives exercised a
strong influence over the practice of Catholicism in early modern Europe.
This tension between universality on the one hand and particularity on
the other was evident among the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the day, as well
as among religious orders such as the Society of Jesus. It is imperative to
avoid explaining the fortunes of the China mission in reductionist terms
9
Introduction F


based on the national characters of its priests, but it is equally important
to recognize that distinct regional forms of Catholic life and Jesuit atti-
tudes influenced the development of the missionary enterprise. Two ex-
amples will suffice to alert the reader to these tensions. One is the appear-
ance of fault lines according to nationality among the China missionaries
in the mid-seventeenth century, as the devotional (and political) center of
gravity in Catholic Europe shifted from Spain to France. Many of the
French, Flemish, German, and Italian missionaries who arrived in China
after 1650 brought with them different attitudes toward the combination
of political sentiment and piety which had caused distress among their
brethren who had traveled from Europe at the time of Habsburg ascen-
dancy. And the most glaring example of this tension occurred when the
Society’s members in China became embroiled in a bitter intramural dis-
pute with a band of French Jesuits sponsored by Louis XIV who arrived in
1687. The newcomers insisted forcefully on their independence from their
confreres, whom they labeled and dismissed as “Portuguese.”
If at one end of the spectrum of early modern Catholicism can be
found the forces of spiritual renewal, at the other lay the instruments of
ecclesiastical control associated with the Counter-Reformation. Whereas
the zealous dynamism of the Catholic Reformation period created the
centrifugal spiritual energy that impelled the Jesuits to travel from Europe
to Asia, the centripetal forces of the ecclesiastical hierarchy generated in
response to the Protestant challenge also acted as a decisive brake on the
China mission. In particular, two processes that had their origins in the
mid-sixteenth century at the time of the Council of Trent eventually came
to intrude on the Jesuits’ activities in Asia: a repressive effort that sought
to check innovation in theological matters; and the push toward papal
primacy, accompanied by exertions to reduce independence among the
regular clergy. It was the combination of these forces, rather than the dif-
ficulty of translating Catholic Christianity into Chinese, that eventually
brought the mission to an end.
The Counter-Reformation was a late arrival in China. To be sure, by
the time its effects were felt in distant Asia, it was no longer the same
phenomenon that had given rise to the Holy Office of the Inquisition or
the Index of Prohibited Books. By the time the Thirty Years’ War came
to an end, the Counter-Reformation had entered its maturity, drawing
its strength from decades’ worth of experience accumulated by the offi-
cial organs of institutional repression.10 At that time, these church bod-
10
E Introduction


ies were kept busy primarily by the adjudication of disputes between
Catholics, such as the conflict between the Jesuits and the Jansenists,
rather than the persecution of heretics or those who practiced Judaism
or Islam, which had preoccupied them in times past. Nevertheless, the
sheer distance between Europe and the Asian mission fields meant that it
took decades before the Jesuits’ policies in China began to cause concern
among the theology faculty of the Sorbonne or to the Roman Inquisition.
The social standing and religious dynamism of the Society of Jesus during
its first century had by and large shielded the order from censure—if not
from suspicion—for heterodoxy, even if the Jesuits produced perhaps
more than their share of controversial theologians. Their detractors, many
of them members of other religious orders, rarely stopped insisting that
the Society’s positions on matters divine were less than orthodox. After
becoming embroiled in polemics over their stances on regicide, free will,
and moral theology, the Jesuits had to face bitter and persistent criticism
in Europe and Asia about their missionary practices in China.
Readers familiar with the history of the Jesuits in China or that of the
Enlightenment will already be aware of the controversies over the Chinese
Rites, and the causes for contention will be discussed at several points in
the following chapters. Still, it is worth noting here that the ferocity of
this debate played an important role in galvanizing anti-Jesuit sentiment
at the highest levels of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in the late seventeenth
century. At issue was where the men of the Society situated the divide be-
tween idolatry and orthodoxy among their Chinese Christians. Could
Catholic scholar-officials participate in the state ceremonies linked to
Confucianism? And what was the appropriate way for Christians to honor
the dead in a culture that observed ancient funerary traditions? In the eyes
of some of the other European missionaries who arrived in China in the
1630s, the Jesuits had expanded the limits of acceptable Catholic practice
so far as to be abetting paganism among their flocks. These critics took
their impressions of the practices of the Society’s neophytes back to Eu-
rope and submitted their findings to the highest theological tribunals. Af-
ter decades of polemics on both sides of the thorny issue of the Chinese
Rites, the papacy decided against the Jesuits and set out to impose its will
on the missionaries in China.
The expansion of papal power in the wake of the Council of Trent was
a process that spanned the early modern period. Despite the obvious dif-
ferences between the nature of the power possessed by popes and kings,
11
Introduction F


the centralizing forces within the church were as strong as they were in
Europe’s secular monarchies.11 The papacy’s drive to assert its primacy
over church institutions included the demand that all Catholic rituals
conform to the Roman standard, as well as the insistence that indepen-
dent bodies such as religious orders be brought more firmly under Rome’s
control.12 The Jesuits, for example, would be forced toward stricter obser-
vance of their vows of obedience to the Holy See. The overseas missions,
and in particular the China enterprise, were key battlegrounds in this
struggle. In the late seventeenth century, the Society of Jesus increasingly
came into conflict with the cardinals of the Congregation for the Propaga-
tion of the Faith, or Propaganda Fide, the church body created in 1622 to
supervise missionary work.
For the papacy, the main issue was control over Asian Catholics and
their missionary pastors. In an attempt to circumvent the loose jurisdic-
tion of the archbishop of Goa, whose expansive see, created in the early
sixteenth century, stretched from East Africa to Japan, late-seventeenth-
century popes began to appoint Propaganda bishops to administer the na-
scent Christian communities in lands such as Vietnam, India, and China.
Yet the China Jesuits were no more ready to cede control over their mis-
sion church than popes and cardinals were willing to brook insubordina-
tion from the members of a religious order. In the wake of a disastrous
embassy to the Kangxi emperor, during which a papal legate unsuccess-
fully attempted to negotiate control over China’s Catholics, the Jesuits
were faced with the impossible choice of obeying the papacy or remaining
among their Christians. This dilemma proved fatal. Among its conse-
quences were the expulsion of several missionaries from China and a
change in relations between the Jesuits and indigenous authorities that ul-
timately led to the proscription of Christianity. In the end, Rome de-
stroyed what it could not possess.
This is in the main a European story, even if the Jesuits’ efforts in China
have traditionally been set down as part of a Chinese tale. It goes without
saying that the social, political, economic, and religious contexts of the
late Ming–early Qing era were important to the development of the mis-
sionary project, and they form the backdrop to this account. While the
reader will no doubt gain a greater knowledge of European religious cul-
ture than of its Chinese counterpart, I have made a concerted attempt to
provide a balanced depiction not only of the missionaries and the Chinese
12
E Introduction


but also of aspects of Christianity that impinged on China. Such a safe-
guard is meant to keep the central elements of this story from being re-
duced to caricature, a fate they have suffered on occasion in missionary
history when Jesuits were depicted as uniformly heroic and China as un-
changing. By the same token, I have chosen to avoid the polemical themes
that have preoccupied many previous scholars who pondered the role of
the Jesuits within Chinese history. It is assumed in this book that there is
no urgent need to celebrate missionary triumphs, to provide apologetics
for the perceived failures of Christian churches in China, to denounce
subtle (or direct) forms of Western imperialism, or to lament the corrup-
tion of Chinese culture by foreign taint.
How has the history of the Jesuit mission to China been written? For
generations, scholars relied on the narrative established by the missionar-
ies themselves in the early modern period. Since the Society of Jesus ac-
tively publicized its overseas missions for the purposes of celebrating its
triumphs and attracting recruits, reports from Ming China began to be
printed in Europe shortly after the order acquired its first residence within
that empire. Following thirty years of brief statements on missionary valor
and achievement, the first substantial history of the mission appeared in
1615, when a version of mission founder Matteo Ricci’s diary was trans-
lated into Latin and published as De Christiana Expeditione apud Sinas,
“The Christian Expedition to China”—the title an unwitting parallel to
its contemporary, Journey to the West.13 Subsequently translated into a
number of European languages, this text enshrined Ricci at the heart of
the mission’s history. In effect, it made the chronology of the early prog-
ress of the mission largely identical to that of his journey from outsider in
Canton in 1582 to insider in Peking in 1610. Later Jesuit authors, as well as
external commentators, seized on this narrative thread and developed it
further over subsequent decades by adding episodes about the missionary-
astronomers who served at the imperial court.14 Scholars who drew uncrit-
ically from these sources continued to recapitulate this story until the
middle of the twentieth century, presenting the Jesuit mission to their
readers in the same way Ricci himself had done.
Certain aspects of the image and actions of the missionaries highlighted
in early European publications—their use of silk robes, their attraction to
the study of pagan arcana such as Confucian philosophy, and their will-
ingness to serve a non-Christian emperor by purveying the profane sci-
ences (all topoi rooted in the reality of their working conditions at the Im-
13
Introduction F


perial Astronomical Bureau)—were powerful rhetorical weapons used by
the detractors of the Society of Jesus. The Jesuits countered with volume
upon apologetic volume to defend their reputation at Paris and Rome,
but the polemical interpretations of the China mission produced first by
Jansenists and later by philosophes proved to be longer-lived. Translations
of texts in the latter vein bequeathed to the Anglo-Saxon public a vision of
the Society’s enterprise that was awash in commonplaces and merged eas-
ily into the nineteenth century’s rising tide of anti-Jesuitism. The mission
was primarily metropolitan, as the polemic vision would have it; it was fo-
cused on the imperial court of China. The Jesuits had little interest in
preaching to commoners; naturally, their enterprise must falter as soon as
Chinese elites grew weary of them. Of course, this argument continued,
the Jesuits sought to forestall the demise of their project. Their overween-
ing concern to avoid offending their hosts led them to embark on a vain
search for parallels between Chinese antiquity and Christian revelation, to
the point that they maneuvered themselves into obscuring crucial doc-
trinal, such as the Incarnation and the Passion. These notions melded
with a broader set of stereotypes that labeled the Jesuits as devious, cun-
ning, and laxist. A wealth of clichés about the China mission resulted.
When it was not merely an object of praise or derision, the Jesuits’ mis-
sion was often presented as part of a larger history either of the spread of
the Christian faith in China or of Sino-Western relations. Echoes of an
older apologetic tradition could still be heard in the works of scholars in
the early twentieth century who treated the Jesuits’ enterprise in late Ming
and early Qing China as a logical starting point in charting the implanta-
tion of Christianity in that country. This expansive view resulted in a sec-
tarian interpretation lacking in analytical rigor. Since a significant part
of modern scholarship on China grew out of Protestant and Catholic
missionary experiences in the late Qing and Republican periods, it was
only natural for historians in this tradition to inscribe their own efforts
within the centuries-old tradition of evangelizing the Chinese. For Catho-
lic scholars, a salient topic for discussion emerged after the final resolution
of the controversy over the Chinese Rites in 1939. For reasons having to
do with the unenviable position of Japanese Catholics at a time of strident
nationalism in the run-up to the Pacific war, a papal brief ruled in favor of
the interpretation of Confucian ceremonies as political rather than reli-
gious. By doing so, the papacy legitimated the standpoint of the early
modern Jesuits, which had previously been condemned.
14
E Introduction


This change in official policy, coupled with the increasingly global con-
cerns of the Catholic Church in the 1950s and 1960s, sparked reevalua-
tions of the China Jesuits—but often for polemical ends in the theological
debate over the limits of inculturation that continues to the present day.
Scholars engaged in this debate over the degree of cultural accommoda-
tion that may be necessary in spreading Christianity to non-Western cul-
tures, often members of religious orders themselves, frequently saw the
China Jesuits as forerunners of “modern” or “tolerant” attitudes. A sharp
and restricted focus on missionaries who had been deeply engaged with
native philosophical traditions was especially useful for these authors.
Those Jesuits of long ago, they maintained, had possessed an enlightened
ability to distinguish between essential and nonessential cultural and doc-
trinal concerns.15 Since their chief aim was to argue this position to a
theologically minded audience, these scholars neglected to analyze other
aspects of the mission. Topics such as how the Jesuits organized their en-
terprise, how the mission church developed, or what forms of Catholic pi-
ety they fostered were left untouched, leaving much ground for future his-
torians of religion to cover.
The place of the Jesuit mission within the grand interpretive theme
of the history of Sino-Western relations has been another topic of de-
bate among historians, one that continues to inspire new contributions.
Scholars writing from this perspective tended to focus on how European
science and technology were transmitted to China via missionary publica-
tions. Primarily concerned with the modern technological and industrial
divide between East and West, they presented the Jesuits as the standard-
bearers of superior technological skills that were eagerly received by indig-
enous intellectuals. To be sure, the Jesuits who went to China were not,
for the most part, the cutting-edge natural philosophers of their day;
moreover, they had ulterior religious motives for engaging in translations
of scientific texts. Nevertheless, yet another vision of the China mission
emerged, one centered on the Imperial Astronomical Bureau at Peking.
Although this vision was devoid of a religious content, it tracked the
same chronology and focused on the same individuals as the story told by
Christian missiologists. As did their predecessors, scholars following this
new approach lingered at certain determinate way stations, showing that
Matteo Ricci secured access to the mandarin bureaucracy by virtue of his
first philosophical treatises in Chinese and that his successors Johann
Adam Schall and Ferdinand Verbiest continued his work by producing
15
Introduction F


texts on European mathematics and astronomy. Instead of being ap-
praised for their attempts to pass on religion, the Jesuits and their Chinese
interlocutors were evaluated on the basis of their level of success at trans-
mitting modernity through science.16 Against the backdrop of nineteenth-
and twentieth-century relations between China and the West, it appeared
that the missionaries had failed the Chinese on both accounts: they had
given them neither faith nor reason.
Altogether the Jesuits have been freighted by historians, surely against
their original intentions, with the task of building a bridge between civili-
zations, one that would serve as a long-lasting conduit between East and
West. Only the surge of interest since the quatercentenary of Matteo
Ricci’s arrival in China in 1982 has lifted something of this burden from
the missionaries’ shoulders by calling into question many of the supposi-
tions undergirding earlier analyses. Much of the dynamism behind this
new wave of scholarly production has come from the field of Chinese
studies, where experts have looked away from the corpus of Western
sources used by earlier generations of historians, turning instead to mate-
rials in Asian languages.17 When seen from a perspective conceived within
a Chinese cultural frame, that is, through an analytical lens shaped by the
dynamics of internal historical development, attempts to explain China—
itself a vague term—exclusively in relation to the West or to Christianity
come to seem particularly futile. Similarly, the assumption that Chinese
intellectuals quickly recognized the inherent superiority of Western tech-
nology or religion is rendered somewhat absurd when confronted with the
variety of textual responses to the Jesuits found in both print and manu-
script sources. The move away from missionary texts to Asian sources has
produced a concomitant reconceptualization of the Jesuits and their role
in Chinese history.
As a result, numerous new avenues for research have been opened and
new paths of inquiry illuminated. One of the most fruitful lines of in-
quiry focuses on how Chinese thinkers responded to the missionaries’
texts, whether religious or scientific, and on the ways in which they incor-
porated aspects of Western thought into their own worldviews.18 Another
analyzes the texts produced by the Jesuits in Chinese to sound the depths
of their engagement with indigenous philosophical traditions and to ex-
amine how they chose to represent Western concepts in Chinese terms.
My own book is deeply indebted to the historians, linguists, and philoso-
phers who have contributed to reshaping this field in recent years. But I
16
E Introduction


seek to pursue my own path and recount the story of the missionaries in a
fresh light, presenting a new chronology of the Jesuit enterprise and chart-
ing the trajectory of its development according to new criteria. Surely the
contours of the mission’s history will emerge more distinctly if many of
the heroic attributes conventionally ascribed to the Jesuits in the past are
first erased and the priests reinserted into their proper, early modern Eu-
ropean context. Only by uncoupling their actions from the long chain of
events related to the expansive—often teleologically conceived—phenom-
enon of the spread of Christianity in China can the missionaries’ inten-
tions and motivations be revealed.
The resources necessary for this reconsideration of the Jesuits’ China
mission were hidden in the proverbial broad daylight. The shift to Chi-
nese-language documents has greatly enriched the field; but the return to
previously neglected Western-language sources can also bring new under-
standing to the history of the mission. Despite the number of early mod-
ern and contemporary works on the China Jesuits, very little attention has
been paid to the large corpus of descriptive accounts, correspondence, and
administrative documents written in Portuguese and kept in European ar-
chives. This fact is all the more surprising because the number of these
sources, compared with those in Latin or other Romance languages and
Germanic tongues, is disproportionately large.
That Portuguese should be so important ought to astonish no one fa-
miliar with the history of Catholic Europe and the European expansion to
Asia and the Americas. The China mission was supported in more than
one way by the Portuguese crown and was staffed primarily with men
from continental and insular Portugal. It formed a part of the Portuguese
Assistancy, the Jesuit administrative unit that roughly overlapped the most
optimistic Portuguese pretensions to imperial authority—all lands be-
tween Brazil and Japan.19 Hence the lingua franca of the China Jesuits was
perforce Portuguese. The missionaries also used other European languages
to communicate with one another and with their superiors in Rome, but
far less often. In the wake of the collapse of the Portuguese empire and the
suppression of the Society of Jesus, the documentary legacy of the China
mission made its way back to Europe and eventually came to rest in large
part in the royal and ecclesiastical archives of Lisbon and Rome. While
the durability of the Black Legend in Anglo-American historiography is a
likely partial explanation for the lack of English-language studies based on
these sources, it remains puzzling why generations of French, Belgian,
17
Introduction F


German, and Italian scholars—many of whom were Jesuits or members of
other Catholic religious orders—largely ignored these Portuguese docu-
ments.20 This study of the Jesuit mission to China is based primarily on
archival research in Western-language sources. It draws heavily on the col-
lections of the Biblioteca da Ajuda in Lisbon and the Archivum Romanum
Societatis Jesu in Rome. The sources now in the Ajuda Palace library are
copies of documents once found in the Society’s archives at Macau. They
contain documents pertaining to the Jesuit administrative units known as
the Province of Japan (which covered the missionary efforts in that coun-
try, as well as those in Southeast Asia and parts of southern China after
1657) and the Vice-Province of China (founded in 1619). Between about
1742 and 1748, the Jesuits José Montanha and João Álvares were commis-
sioned by the Real Academia da História in Lisbon to transcribe the con-
tents of their order’s repository at Macau. The sixty-two bound volumes
of the Jesuítas na Ásia collection they produced are faithful copies of
many texts that were lost after the suppression of the Society of Jesus. This
invaluable archival resource contains records of internal and external af-
fairs that passed through the Portuguese colony of Macau, the nexus of Je-
suit communications between Europe and Asia. From yearly reports on
the mission’s advances and setbacks to insider accounts of the missionar-
ies’ labors and private correspondence between Jesuits and their superiors
on a host of sensitive issues, the Ajuda collection gives unparalleled in-
sight into the Society’s China enterprise.
The best complement to the Ajuda sources is the extensive collection of
missionary materials at the Roman archive of the Society of Jesus. This
central administrative repository, dispersed after the 1773 suppression of
the order and subsequently reconstructed, contains documents addressing
broader institutional concerns relating to the Society’s enterprises around
the globe. Sources found in the Japonica-Sinica, Goana, and Lusitanica
collections (those dealing with the affairs of the Jesuit provinces of Japan
and China, Goa, and Portugal, respectively) cover issues reserved for the
Society’s highest administrative levels. These documents include items
such as yearly personnel catalogues used for assigning positions within the
mission hierarchy, annual letters relating the mission’s progress, copies of
the Jesuits’ Chinese compositions, and petitions to Superiors General for
binding decisions on missionary policies. The combined analysis of this
double set of archival sources affords a view of the Jesuits and their mis-
sion from the inside, revealing how the missionaries themselves under-
18
E Introduction


stood their efforts and opportunities as well as how they evaluated the
outcomes of their strategies and actions in the mission field. It is hoped
that linking these documents to recent studies by scholars who have
mined Chinese-language sources as well as to newly translated Chinese
materials will be helpful in producing a balanced account of the Jesuits’
enterprise.
This book is divided into two parts, the first consisting of an extended
chronological narrative and the second analyzing specific aspects of mis-
sionary education and the components of the mission church. Part I re-
considers the mission’s development, following a chronology that departs
somewhat from the norm. Its five chapters address the initiation, consoli-
dation, and disintegration of the Society’s enterprise, with the aim of pre-
senting a new framework for the discussion of the Jesuits’ China mission
and constructing a contextual backdrop for the analyses of its internal dy-
namics. The main protagonists in this section are the Jesuits, their con-
verted Christians, and other Chinese figures whose paths intersected with
that of the mission. At times, Europeans other than Jesuits are mentioned,
but only in regard to their interactions with the Society and its Chinese
flock. Since this book is not a general history of Christianity in China, the
endeavors of the Dominicans, Franciscans, Augustinians, Vicars Apos-
tolic, and members of the Missions Étrangères de Paris are relegated to the
background.21 This was a conscious decision, and the reader should not
assume that it was taken in defense of the Jesuits’ position in their well-
known conflicts with members of other religious orders. Rather, it was
part of my design to examine the Society’s missionary efforts from an
internal perspective. Accordingly, I consider the French Jesuit mission,
founded in 1687, to be of secondary importance as well, for these priests
saw themselves as separate from the Vice-Province, that is, from the enter-
prise that had been initiated by Matteo Ricci.
In keeping with my desire to envision the Jesuit mission as a whole, this
chronology concentrates on the events that took place in the centers of
proselytizing activity in the Chinese provinces rather than on the interac-
tions between missionaries and mandarins at the court. As a result, a host
of previously marginal Jesuits come to be seen as the primary force be-
hind the construction of the mission church. Figures such as Rodrigo de
Figueiredo, Francesco Brancati, José Monteiro, and Étienne Faber—men
who plowed the fertile mission fields of the lower Yangzi valley, the
coastal areas of Fujian, and the Yellow River basin in Shaanxi and
19
Introduction F


Shanxi—appear in high relief, an elevation usually granted only to the
likes of Matteo Ricci, Johann Adam Schall, and Ferdinand Verbiest. The
story of these priests and the communities of Chinese men and women
that formed in response to their message and developed largely under
their guidance is the core of the narrative chapters of Part I.
The central argument developed in the first, narrative section about the
nature of the mission church is that it had been fashioned by the Society
of Jesus in its own image; that the religious practices of the Chinese Chris-
tians reflected Jesuit ideals of lay piety; and that the mission church was
built according to the Society’s organizational templates. To support this
claim, the second part of this book presents analyses of the elements that
combined to form the missionary enterprise and its Christian communi-
ties, namely, the Jesuits and their Chinese flock.
Part II asks how the Society of Jesus was able to imbue successive gener-
ations of its members with the skills necessary for creating and sustaining
a mission church in a cultural context vastly different from the European
one. Its first two chapters address dimensions of Jesuit education in Eu-
rope and Asia, starting from grammar school and ending at the mission
station. In the Society’s European and, at times, colonial colleges, future
China Jesuits received a standard academic formation and participated in
teaching duties that gave them important intellectual and organizational
skills. During their years in the order’s novitiates, the young men learned
the elements of Jesuit spirituality and pastoral techniques. In this aca-
demic and devotional climate, they developed the desire to spend the rest
of their lives as overseas missionaries. After setting sail for Asia, missionary
hopefuls began to exercise their vocations, practicing their order’s primary
spiritual ministries in the harsh environment of the ships of the Portu-
guese Carreira da Índia. Once in China, new recruits to the mission took
part in the first standardized program for learning the Chinese language
and Confucian thought elaborated by Europeans with the goal of mak-
ing the trainees into efficient, culturally sensitive communicators. Armed
with the skills acquired over an average of seventeen years of study, the Je-
suits ventured into the mission field with arguably the best possible prepa-
ration for meeting the challenges that lay before them.
The last three chapters of this book are dedicated to examining the in-
teractions of these highly trained missionaries with their Chinese interloc-
utors. They deal with the creation and maintenance of the Christian com-
munities that formed the mission church, assaying the lived religion of
20
E Introduction


the Chinese Christians within the context of the forms of spiritual expres-
sion transmitted to them by their Jesuit pastors. This portion of the book
also seeks to evaluate the importation of elements of early modern Catho-
lic piety into the late imperial Chinese context, yet another form of
intercultural communication determined by both European and indige-
nous factors.
These final chapters examine the building blocks of the mission church,
starting with the conditions of conversion and proceeding through the
various forms of communal organization, cohesion, and mutual spiritual
development. The first step in the process of making Christians was active
proselytizing, with Jesuits moving about urban and rural areas and pre-
senting their religious message to prospective converts through rhetorical
agility, amplified by ritual gestures aimed to impress. As substantial num-
bers of people responded to them, the missionaries set up new communi-
ties by employing Jesuit educational techniques that fostered group cohe-
sion and regular devotions. When the numbers of the faithful began to
exceed the missionaries’ pastoral capacities, they began to enlist male and
female catechists as auxiliaries in the maintenance of their dispersed “par-
ishes,” assigning them duties that ranged from basic supervision to the
teaching of doctrine.
Like any other religious institution, the mission church was made up of
individuals with varying degrees of religious commitment, from members
in name only to lukewarm adherents to fervent believers. The last group
included those Christians who adhered most faithfully to the Jesuits’ vi-
sion of the rewards of effective missionary work. These men and women
demanded new forms of spiritual expression that would set them apart
from the mass of other believers, and the missionaries responded by help-
ing them to elaborate forms of group piety. Special brotherhoods for
prayer, penance, and charity eventually spread to all the provincial centers
of the mission church, creating loci of fervor where a new Catholic elite
engaged in increasingly complex forms of devotion—practices that came
to equal the rigorous lay devotions recommended at the time by the Soci-
ety of Jesus for its most pious European followers. Empowered by the
spiritual intensity bequeathed to them by their pastors over decades, these
individuals were responsible for maintaining Christianity in China during
the eighteenth century, as the Jesuit mission faded into memory.
21
Introduction F




I
charting the
course
F




1
An Uneasy Foothold
In the three decades that followed Francis Xavier’s arrival in
East Asia in 1549, Jesuit priests attempted to establish a mission in the
Ming empire without success. But after a change of tactics in 1579, a
handful of missionaries from the Society of Jesus began to attract the at-
tention of influential figures in Guangdong Province. The friendships
forged between these two groups enabled the Jesuits to emerge from the
undifferentiated tides of traders that swept up the Pearl River delta each
year to visit the Canton fairs. Unlike other foreign emissaries, these new
arrivals would be permitted to remain in China.
During their first years in the Ming empire, the pioneers of the China
mission made contacts with important political figures by projecting an
image of erudition and moral austerity that appealed to their interlocu-
tors. They thereby garnered fame and, more important, the possibility of
summoning their missionary brethren from Macau. The early China Jesu-
its devoted themselves primarily to learning the language and observing
local customs, which in turn allowed them to solidify their social contacts
and convert some of their hosts to Christianity. While their initial tactical
move was to don the attire of the Buddhist clergy and present themselves
as religious figures, the missionaries at length adopted the dress and atti-
tude of the secular authorities—the mandarins. By creating a new im-
age for themselves, one echoing the Chinese cultural register, the Jesuits
gained acceptance among members of the late Ming elite. They saw this
type of recognition as the necessary prerequisite for their missionary work.


26
E charting the course


27
An Uneasy Foothold F


The Jesuits’ enthusiasm at this early stage in their enterprise was not re-
ciprocated, and its development did not follow a linear progression. In
fact, the mission’s first foundations rested on the acceptance of their pub-
lic image rather than on making a significant number of converts. Al-
though they attracted attention from many levels of society, they claimed
few adherents to their religion. Moreover, the Jesuits were far more suc-
cessful at transmitting Christianity to commoners than to members of the
elite, despite the time they spent currying the favor of the literati. To be
sure, after twenty years of work, their reputation for erudition had en-
abled them to establish residences in four cities, including Nanjing and
Peking. In time, the nuclei of the Jesuits’ first Christian communities
would be formed in these cities, where the mission sank roots deep
enough to withstand the winds of adversity.
Opening the Door, 1579–1594
According to Jesuit lore, the China mission grew from Francis Xavier’s dy-
ing wish. While the Apostle of the Orient had originally bypassed China
in 1549, heading instead for Kyushu, he was aware of the need for estab-
lishing a mission in the Ming empire in order to ease the spread of Chris-
tianity elsewhere in East Asia. His possibilities for action were restricted,
however, by the fact that Xavier—like all of his successors—was depen-
dent on others for transportation and political legitimation. His range of
options was therefore limited by the rhythms of Portuguese trade in Mari-
time Asia and the imperial logic of the representatives of the king of Por-
tugal. By 1551, however, Xavier had decided on a plan to get beyond the
ephemeral trading entrepôts of the Portuguese on the coastal islands off
southern China. Responding to the pleas of merchants held captive at
Canton, he arranged to be appointed to the train of an embassy from the
viceroy of the Portuguese Estado da Índia to the Ming emperor.
Unfortunately for him, Francis Xavier’s hopes for a splendid entry into
China were dashed when his embassy was disbanded by order of the ad-
miral of Malacca, Álvaro de Ataíde, the son of Vasco da Gama. Not eas-
ily deterred, the missionary tempted fate by heading to the China coast
on his own initiative in 1552, trusting in his ability to find a Chinese
merchant willing to smuggle him into the empire. He got as far as
Shangchuan Island, a rocky outcrop not far from the mouth of the Pearl
River, but the Portuguese who had carried him thus far left him behind
28
E charting the course


and sailed away at the end of the trading season. Likewise, all the Chinese
traders had retreated homeward, fearful of being implicated in breaking
the laws against foreigners’ entering the empire, which had been im-
posed to curb the piracy that was rampant along the Chinese littoral.
Weakened by hunger and disease, Xavier died in the early hours of De-
cember 3, 1552.1
In his last letter he wrote about his great hopes of going to China even
as he uttered the concern that Satan was “greatly disturbed” at the pros-
pect of the Jesuits’ starting a mission there.2 The numerous difficulties en-
countered by this Basque priest and by his successors in the course of the
next thirty years of attempts to settle in China seemed to validate his
claim. The first of Xavier’s successors to return to the Guangdong coast
was his former colleague Melchior Nunes Barreto (1520–1571), who had
gathered information about the Ming empire from a Portuguese merchant
in Malacca. The account he wrote for his Jesuit brethren in Europe
touched on issues such as the riches of China’s cities, the intensity of its
commerce, the justice of its mandarins, and the omnipotence of its em-
peror. In short, Barreto’s report spoke of a stable society where civil struc-
tures resembled and even surpassed their European equivalents—the ideal
conditions for Jesuit missionary activity.3
Yet the fortunes of Xavier’s first successors were no better than his own.
Venturing beyond where Xavier had been stalled, Barreto sailed to Can-
ton in 1555 in the company of a Portuguese trade embassy. He remained in
that city for ten months, but when the biannual trade fair ended, he had
to leave China with his compatriots. Frustrated by the intransigence of
the Guangdong mandarins, who insisted on enforcing the Ming laws pro-
hibiting foreigners from residing in China, Barreto and his confreres
turned their attentions to Japan. The wisdom of their choice to focus
their efforts across the sea was confirmed in the late 1560s, when the
schemes by Juan Bautista Ribera (1525–1594) to remain in Canton beyond
the end of the trade fairs were all stymied in similar fashion.4
The Jesuits’ prospects for gaining entry into China were greatly en-
hanced when the agents of the Estado da Índia negotiated the creation of
a permanent Portuguese trading outpost at the mouth of the Pearl River.
The founding of the city of Macau in 1557 was more than beneficial for
the China mission, however. It was of crucial importance for all missions
of the Society of Jesus in East Asia. In this tiny hybrid European-Chinese
settlement the Jesuits had a safe haven, for even though the Guangdong
29
An Uneasy Foothold F


mandarins retained final authority in the city, they delegated effective rule
to the Portuguese. This arrangement permitted the European merchants
who constituted the city’s elite to use Macau as a launching point for their
periodic journeys between Canton and Japan. The Jesuits accordingly fol-
lowed them, benefiting from the regular trading runs to ports such as
Hirado and Nagasaki to consolidate the fledgling mission that Xavier had
founded in western Japan. As conditions in Japan permitted Portuguese
trade in silks and silver to grow, so too did the missionary effort there. But
in light of the considerable advances of the Jesuits in Kyushu in the 1570s
and the Society’s position as the most important religious order in the
Portuguese empire, its lack of engagement in China was something of an
embarrassment.
This situation changed when the path of missionary expansion in
Asia was redirected under the leadership of a forceful new policymaker,
Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606), whom the Society’s Superior General
appointed as his plenipotentiary Visitor to the Asian missions in 1573.
Valignano, a native of southern Italy trained in law, joined the order soon
after it had metamorphosed from a band of charismatic priests into a
highly articulated and structured institution that considered missionary
and educational activities its primary vocations. After serving as the direc-
tor of the Jesuit novitiate in Rome, he was sent to the Indies to verify that
the changes instituted in the Society in Europe were carried out overseas.
This weighty task fell on the shoulders of a man of uncommon ability, for
the Visitor had remarkable talent for political and organizational matters.
Valignano’s initial assignment was to inspect all Jesuit missions between
Mozambique and Miyako, requiring him to shuttle between East Africa,
India, Southeast Asia, China, and Japan. When in the 1590s the Society’s
mission fields had grown too large for any one man to monitor, the Visi-
tor’s bailiwick was limited to East Asia. With regard to the challenge of
China, he insisted on the importance of overcoming the hurdle of lan-
guage—just as the Jesuits in Japan had done. If the Chinese authorities
permitted unlettered Portuguese merchants who spoke only through in-
terpreters to co-opt a slice of their territory, Valignano reasoned, they
would surely allow educated men trained in local customs and language to
penetrate further into their empire.
Valignano therefore wrote to the superior of the Province of India at
Goa and requested that a qualified individual be sent to Macau for the
purpose of learning Chinese. The Visitor specifically mentioned Michele
30
E charting the course


Ruggieri (1543–1607), whose qualities, he said, included the “age, virtue,
ability,” and dedication necessary for the undertaking.5 Ruggieri, also
from southern Italy, was distinguished not only by his religious zeal but
also by doctorates in canon and civil law. He had served the Spanish
crown in Naples before joining the Society and becoming one of Va-
lignano’s novices in Rome. Ruggieri was sent to India in 1578, finished his
theology studies in Goa, and was then assigned to the Fishery Coast in
southern India, where he began to learn Tamil. For Valignano, however,
Ruggieri’s most important quality was his age. The Visitor understood
that a mature Jesuit would likely enjoy a better reception in China than a
young one, and had originally sent for an older missionary.6 Nevertheless,
in 1579 Ruggieri’s thirty-five years still made him almost a decade older
than his peers on the voyage to Asia.7
After traveling overland from his mission station to Cochin and then
by ship to Macau, Ruggieri found instructions from Valignano regarding
his future assignment. He was told to immerse himself in the study of
Chinese language and culture. At the Visitor’s behest, special accommoda-
tions set apart from the rest of the community were provided for him at
the local Jesuit house so that he might not be distracted from his studies.8
Valignano instructed Ruggieri to acquire the Nanjing dialect of spoken
Chinese used by the literati elite rather than the Cantonese of the popula-
tions in Macau and Guangdong. He likened the use of Mandarin to that
of Latin in Europe, justifying his choice to his superiors in Rome by re-
marking that “neither do the mandarins speak any other tongue, nor can
others speak another language with them. Mandarin is so widely spoken
that everyone more or less understands it.”9 These comments did nothing
to diminish the difficulty of Ruggieri’s task, since he had no local inter-
preters to explain Chinese to him. Rather, during the three years he lived
in the Portuguese colony, he struggled to learn the written and spoken
language in the manner of Chinese children—something, he reminded
his superiors, that took schoolboys between fifteen and twenty years to do.
When he began to show progress, Ruggieri complemented his studies by
composing tracts on Christian doctrine so the Chinese would “gain a lik-
ing for this holy law.”10
The hopes of Jesuits throughout Asia were pinned to the outcome of
Ruggieri’s efforts to “open the door” to China.11 They were rewarded
when his studies began to produce fruit in the early 1580s. Just like the
previous missionaries who had tried to gain access to China, Ruggieri
31
An Uneasy Foothold F


traveled to Canton in the company of Portuguese traders from Macau.
But unlike his predecessors, he appealed to the local mandarins in their
own language for permission to stay in Canton—something that quickly
aroused their curiosity. His linguistic ability soon gained him an edge over
the Portuguese merchants, who were obliged to lodge aboard their ships,
for an official granted Ruggieri a small house in which to reside for the
duration of the trade fair.12 The Jesuit repaid his fellow Europeans by
turning part of his quarters into a chapel where they could attend his daily
masses, and he offered his services to them as an intermediary. During the
months that he spent in Canton from 1580 to 1582, Ruggieri became a mi-
nor celebrity, drawing curiosity seekers from throughout the city. In his
own words, “There were people all day long at my doorstep until mid-
night simply to see me, with nothing I could do to make them go away.”13
This show of curiosity, however, did not necessarily imply that Ruggieri
received a warm welcome in Canton. In fact, he claimed that a passerby
had one day rushed into his house and bloodied his forehead with a
stone—a more direct attack than the subtler vexations he suffered at the
hands of others. Thankfully for Ruggieri, he won the friendship of impor-
tant mandarins such as the governor of Guangdong Province, the chief
naval mandarin, a military mandarin, and several retired officials. These
men were drawn to Ruggieri for the European curiosities such as clocks
and prisms that he had brought from Macau and for his unique ability to
speak to them about foreign lands in their own tongue. Ruggieri curried
favor with them, judging that if he gained the friendship of the manda-
rins, “the other heathen subjects would show respect.” And even if not
from genuine respect, the residents of Canton might at least leave him
alone and unharmed out of fear of reprisals from the city’s authorities.14
By entering the shadow of local officials for protection, Ruggieri inaugu-
rated a strategy for protecting the mission that would endure until the last
China Jesuits of the early modern period died at Peking in the late eigh-
teenth century.
Although tradition holds that Matteo Ricci, Ruggieri’s first companion,
was the founder of the China mission, that honor rightfully belongs to
Ruggieri himself. It was due to his diplomacy at Canton that the Jesuits
were not only permitted to reside within the Ming empire in 1582 but
also granted a temple in Zhaoqing, the capital of Guangdong Province.
Making his desire to remain in China known along with his Western curi-
osities, Ruggieri appears to have bargained for his first residence with a
32
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clock. In December 1582 the Jesuit was summoned from Macau by the
governor general, who had earlier shown interest in the timepiece while at
the same time indicating two residences in Zhaoqing where Ruggieri
might reside. Although Ruggieri was skeptical about the outcome of
this encounter—“because the promises of these heathens are of little
worth, since they ordinarily lie and are not bestirred except in their own
interest”—Valignano insisted that he go “to tempt fate.”15 For his part,
Ruggieri went to the provincial capital “to conserve the friendship” that
he had established with this mandarin.16 The governor made good on his
offer, and the missionary was allowed to live at an old temple. There, he
told his patron, he would continue his language studies “so as to be able to
communicate our knowledge and learn of the good things of China.”17
Not only did Ruggieri get a residence at Zhaoqing from the governor,
but also he secured permission for two companions to enter China. When
it appeared that the Jesuit was making progress with his diplomatic over-
tures, Valignano summoned two other missionaries from India to Macau
to join him. These two Italians, Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) and Francesco
Pasio (1554–1612), had attended the Society’s novitiate in Rome during the
Visitor’s tenure. On finishing his studies at the order’s college in Goa,
Ricci taught grammar and rhetoric in Goa and Cochin; Pasio served as
mission procurator at the capital of the Estado da Índia. The latter ac-
companied Ruggieri to their new house in late 1582, with Ricci heading
into China in early autumn of the following year. Although Pasio would
not remain with them for long, Ricci and Ruggieri stayed in Zhaoqing for
the next six years, continuing their studies and devising ways of spreading
their religious message.
Making the adjustment to life in a Chinese city far from the comfort-
ing presence of other Europeans was difficult for the missionaries, but
they saw their best chance for starting a new enterprise in the adaptation
to local customs. At the urging of the governor general, Ruggieri chose to
dress in the fashion of the Buddhist clergy. He claimed that this garb was
“slightly different” from his sober soutane, insisting in early 1583, “Now
the robes are being cut and soon we will be made into Chinese.”18 While
this change in attire would create ambiguities about the nature of their
message, something the missionaries would later correct, it no doubt
made their exotic presence more palatable to the local literati. Yet even
dressed in this fashion, the missionaries at Zhaoqing decided to keep a
low profile. According to Ruggieri, they had two goals for the first years of
33
An Uneasy Foothold F


their stay among the Chinese: to edify them by their lifestyle and “to learn
characters with all possible diligence in order to read their books well and
confound their errors” while acquiring “the language for explaining our
concepts.”19
Even if he had gained a residence inside the Ming empire, Ruggieri
remained doubtful about how long the Jesuits would be welcome in
Zhaoqing. His fears of provoking popular unrest were somewhat allayed
by the good relations he maintained with the educated elite of the region,
including the provincial mandarins. Through their conversations on Eu-
ropean philosophy, morality, and, most important, mathematics and tech-
nology, the missionaries piqued the curiosity of these Late Ming literati.
In turn, their Chinese acquaintances spread the word about the foreigners
to their friends and patrons, contributing to the Jesuits’ meager store of
guanxi (that is, a personal relationship or connection understood as a
form of social capital). Most famously, Ruggieri and Ricci discoursed
on Euclidean geometry to their visitors, showed them maps indicating
China’s place in the wider world, explained the functions of armillary
spheres and glass prisms, and displayed oil paintings of Jesus and the Vir-
gin. Only after they had captured the attention of their listeners did they
broach the subject of the primary cause behind the perfect order of the
universe demonstrated by mathematics. By late 1584 they had printed up
translations of the Paternoster, the Ten Commandments, and the Ave
Maria to reinforce the interest of the curious.20
By 1585 Valignano felt confident enough to tell Claudio Aquaviva, the
Superior General in Rome, that the decision he had made six years earlier
to call Ruggieri to Macau had not been in vain. Nevertheless, the Visitor
found himself defending the fact that there had been no reports of Chi-
nese conversions to Christianity—in contrast to the substantial tallies that
kept arriving from Japan. He asserted that the missionaries at Zhaoqing
were obeying his orders to “exercise much caution in making Christians
. . . until they became well known and recognized,” so as to avoid being
expelled from Guangdong Province. His exhortations for restraint not-
withstanding, Valignano reported that his subordinates had claimed some
conversions, “and the mandarins had shown no disgust.”21 These neo-
phytes included the first individual baptized by the Jesuits in China, a
man with an incurable illness who had been abandoned by his relatives in
a field to await death. When the missionaries took this man in, he gladly
agreed to learn about their religion and accepted baptism shortly before
dying.22
34
E charting the course


According to Valignano, the missionaries at Zhaoqing had also bap-
tized a literatus, an individual “who was learned and important, and was
going to receive the degree of mandarin.”23 The Jesuits knew that conver-
sions among the ranks of the literati could provide social legitimation for
the mission, and those from within the mandarinate could afford political
protection. But rather than the fruit of any overall strategy to preach to
the elite, this specific conversion (if it was more than merely a reflection of
missionary optimism) was a fortunate side effect of the Jesuits’ sustained
contacts with educated individuals. In fact, missionary writings—Matteo
Ricci’s in particular—make it clear the Jesuits knew that their converts
were likely to come from the “very lowest rank of the people.” These in-
cluded outcasts, the destitute, the terminally ill, illiterate rustics, and un-
cultured artisans whom the missionaries encountered in the course of
their charitable works. As was evident from the fact that the first Chinese
Christian was destitute, wrote Ricci, building a mission church in the
Ming empire would take patience, as “God clearly wanted such a great
project to commence from the smallest beginning.”24 Other conversions
sparked in the Jesuits’ first years of spreading their religious message came
from the same humble milieu, a pattern initiated here that repeated itself
for the rest of the mission’s history.
As the Jesuits made themselves more visible to the inhabitants of
Zhaoqing by claiming converts in plebeian circles, they also brought lin-
gering popular suspicions about them to the fore. Lacking the knowledge
of the Cantonese language that might have helped them explain their
message to a larger percentage of the population, and hampered by orders
to exercise discretion, the missionaries were open to all manner of rumor
and speculation. For instance, Matteo Ricci claimed that the news of the
first conversion “was poorly received by the Chinese,” who ventured that
there was a jewel in the dying man’s head and that the missionaries would
extract it after his death.25 In Guangdong Province, where an exposure to
coastal piracy and contraband as well as the constant presence of a variety
of foreigners at the Canton fairs bred resentment, the missionaries were in
an especially precarious position. On more than one occasion in the 1580s,
inhabitants of Zhaoqing aired their ill feelings by pelting the missionaries’
house with stones.26 Perhaps more seriously for the Jesuits, several local
mandarins were fearful of the missionaries’ links to Macau, where the Por-
tuguese remained a potentially dangerous presence on Chinese soil.27 The
fact that the officials who had befriended the Jesuits were constantly being
rotated to assignments elsewhere in China merely compounded the inse-
35
An Uneasy Foothold F


curity of the missionaries’ situation. Obviously, there was no guarantee
that they would be able to win over all newly arrived officials.
In spite of these difficulties, the Jesuits felt confident about the pros-
pects for the mission in the late 1580s. Ruggieri informed Valignano of his
need for more men, including “someone with prudence” to come to the
mission as its superior, and the Visitor responded by posting António de
Almeida (1557–1591) and Duarte de Sande (1547–1599) to China.28 Unlike
Almeida, a young man who had only recently arrived from Portugal,
Sande had been in India for seven years by 1585 and had served as the rec-
tor of the Jesuit College of Bassein. The reason for choosing Duarte de
Sande as mission superior, beyond the fact that the Society of Jesus tended
to promote older, more experienced priests to positions of leadership,
was that Ruggieri had never held such an administrative post within the
Society.
Another reason for Sande’s appointment as mission superior was that
Ruggieri had engineered a project for expanding the Jesuit enterprise far-
ther into the empire. He had been invited by Wang Pan (jinshi degree
1572), the circuit intendant for Guangdong and Jiangxi provinces, to ac-
company him on his journey to Peking, or at least as far as the official’s
home in Zhejiang Province. In order to ensure the safety of the mission,
Ruggieri left on his journey northward in November 1585 with Almeida,
leaving Sande and Ricci at Zhaoqing. Although his mission ultimately
proved fruitless, it impressed upon Ruggieri the immense scale of China
and the possibility that he would be able to enlarge his circle of elite
friends elsewhere.29 This opinion would be confirmed during the mission-
ary’s two other trips to Guangxi and Huguang provinces in 1587.
Although in their later recollections the China Jesuits would gloss over
the setbacks that they encountered during their first two decades of trying
to get their mission established, the late 1580s were a time of crisis for their
fledgling enterprise. Their labors were not made any easier by such ven-
tures as those launched by the imprudent Spanish Jesuit Alonso Sánchez
(1545–1593), who twice visited China and circulated rumors and projects
in Macau, Manila, Madrid, and Rome about a Spanish embassy to Peking
(with the figment of a Spanish invasion of the Ming empire looming in
the background).30 In order to dispel notions about the feasibility of such
endeavors in Europe, Valignano sent Ruggieri to the Roman curia with a
petition to have this most informed of all Jesuit China hands appointed
papal ambassador to the Wanli emperor (r. 1572–1620). But Ruggieri
36
E charting the course


never returned to China after his departure for Italy in late 1588, and with
the death of four popes in quick succession, his project never got off
the ground. Luckily for the China mission, neither did the schemes of
Sánchez.31
Further difficulties arose when popular resentment toward the mission-
aries and their contacts with the Portuguese boiled over at Zhaoqing in
1589. The new officials who had come to replace the Jesuits’ friends in po-
sitions of local authority decided that it was preferable for the missionaries
to leave than for the city to face the prospect of civil unrest.32 Matteo
Ricci, by that time the most experienced missionary, then decided to peti-
tion the new governor for another residence within Guangdong Province.
His audacity was rewarded by an offer to reside in any city except Canton
or Zhaoqing. Ricci chose Shaozhou in the northern part of the province,
where the missionaries apparently got a warmer reception than in the pro-
vincial capital. Ricci claimed that they successfully avoided trouble: “Since
we say we come from Zhaoqing, no one mentions Macau.” Soon they had
been visited by “all of the important people of the city.”33 While the atti-
tude of the Shaozhou elite seems to have been one of mild acceptance, the
same cannot be said of the Jesuits’ reception by the city’s commoners. The
missionaries suffered random acts of violence and saw their residence van-
dalized repeatedly in the 1590s.
Sporadic friction with the local populace was not the only problem that
confronted the Jesuits at their new residence. A decade after the mission
had managed to establish itself inside the Ming empire, it was still an
enterprise of modest dimensions. Only Ricci and Almeida moved to
Shaozhou in 1589; Sande returned to Macau to take up the post of rector
at the Society’s college. Matters were further complicated by the untimely
death of Almeida in 1591 and that of his replacement, Francesco de Petris
(1562–1593), two years later.
Staffing their enterprise was a chronic problem confronting the mis-
sionaries. It should come as no surprise that sending men from Europe to
China in the early modern period was a tremendous challenge; the sea
voyage alone caused the deaths of half the prospective missionaries who
embarked. Of those who reached Asia alive, very few were sent by their
superiors into China. On their arrival in India, most of them first had to
complete their academic training in the Society’s schools in that country
and were then reassigned to Indian mission stations. Moreover, as the Ja-
pan mission continued to grow in the late sixteenth century, almost all of
37
An Uneasy Foothold F


[To view this image, refer to  
the print version of this title.] 
 
 
 


View of Macau in the early seventeenth century, by Pedro Barreto de Resende. The
Jesuits’ Church of São Paulo and College of Macau are shown atop a staircase next
to the fortress at the center of the map. From António Boccaro, Livro das Plantas de
Todas as Fortalezas, Cidades e Povoações do Estado da Índia Oriental (1635).
[To view this image, refer to  
the print version of this title.] 
 
 
 


the Jesuits who reached Macau were directed onward to Nagasaki rather
than into China.
Moreover, rising tensions between the Portuguese and the Ming au-
thorities magnified the distance between Shaozhou and Macau, making it
difficult for new recruits to enter China. Knowing that the Europeans
maintained close contacts with the Japanese, Guangdong officials tried to
keep watch in order to prevent the infiltration of spies into the empire—
especially in light of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea in 1592.34 As
the Jesuits knew well, the invitation that had been extended to Ruggieri
was not a general permission for any and all Jesuits to enter the empire.
Those seeking to rendezvous with Ricci therefore had to enter illegally,
evading the patrols in the Pearl River delta to get past Canton to relative
safety. By the mid-1590s, one Italian and two Portuguese priests who
would assist in the mission’s later geographic expansion, Lazzaro Cattaneo
(1560–1640), João Soeiro (1556–1607), and João da Rocha (1565–1623), had
managed to reach Shaozhou.
Further help came from the recruitment of Chinese Catholic men, typ-
ically born in Macau of Chinese or mixed parentage. Taking his cue from
the experience of the Japan Jesuits who had made considerable use of na-
tive auxiliaries, in 1591 Duarte de Sande assigned two Macanese men,
Sebastião Fernandes (1562–1621) and Francisco Martins (1545–1604), to
Shaozhou for training as temporal coadjutors.35 This degree of member-
ship within the Society of Jesus meant that they were sworn by vows of
poverty, chastity, and obedience like the rest of their brethren. These co-
adjutors were not, however, destined for the priesthood but were charged
primarily with carrying out domestic tasks or catechetical work. While all
members of the order were identified as coadjutors (and referred to as
“brothers”) upon joining, those who would later become priests were typi-
cally referred to as “scholastics” in light of the fact that they were engaged
in studying at least moral theology (or at most the Society’s complete cur-
riculum in grammar, rhetoric, philosophy, and both moral and specula-
tive theology). One should not, however, infer a value judgment against
these Macanese Christians as a result of their terminal designation as co-
adjutors. In Europe, most of the temporal affairs at the Society’s colleges
and professed houses were run by coadjutors, and the range of duties that
fell to them was even greater in China. Given the language barrier be-
tween the missionaries and Chinese commoners, the Macanese coadjutors
were in a unique position to help the mission in its apostolic endeavors as
40
E charting the course


catechists. Furthermore, in light of the dangers faced by Europeans travel-
ing to and from Macau, Martins and Fernandes were invaluable as couri-
ers. Indistinguishable from other southern Chinese, they easily evaded
border guards on the lookout for foreigners.
Taking the Name of Literati, 1595–1600
In the absence of Michele Ruggieri and mission superior Duarte de Sande,
Matteo Ricci took the lead in managing the affairs of the Jesuits’ China
enterprise. Ricci had shown mettle in avoiding expulsion to Macau when
conditions deteriorated at Zhaoqing and had made progress in learning
the Chinese language and Confucian philosophy. Paradoxically, the slow
pace of conversions had created favorable conditions for him to observe
his hosts, and especially the members of the educated elite. By the mid-
1590s he felt secure enough in his observations of Chinese society to at-
tempt new ways of carrying out his mission. His biggest challenge lay in
somehow ensuring that the Jesuits would not be permanently on the run
from one residence to another when their mandarin friends moved on.
Ricci wanted to enable the mission to sink deeper roots, and that necessi-
tated not only reevaluating the strategies employed by the Jesuits in the
preceding fifteen years but creating new ones as well based on their accu-
mulated knowledge. That, he wrote, was the only way to endow the mis-
sion with a “good foundation,” considering that, in his well-informed
view, he and his colleagues had from the beginning been “treated and re-
garded as the scum of the earth.”36
One part of Ricci’s plan aimed at gaining more durable political protec-
tion. Because the Ming era mandarinate constantly shuffled its members
from one posting to another in order to avoid political entrenchment, the
missionaries could not count on friends who were officials in any one
place for very long. Ricci would therefore have to head to the imperial
court and appeal to the center of Chinese political power in an attempt, if
at all possible, to submit a petition directly to the Wanli emperor. To be
sure, Ricci was not the first to come up with this idea; Michele Ruggieri’s
original intention in going to Zhejiang Province in 1585 was to travel from
there onward to Peking. Nor was this strategy born out of any desire to
concentrate exclusively on preaching the Christian message to the edu-
cated elite.
As a member of the Society of Jesus, a religious order that had been
41
An Uneasy Foothold F


founded only in 1540 but had quickly set up scores of residences across
western Europe and in the European overseas colonies, Ricci was using a
proven method for implanting a new Jesuit presence in a society with
amenable political and social institutions. His idea was to seek out the
highest level of political patronage possible by appealing directly to the
emperor and, failing that, to obtain protection from important individu-
als within the highest ranks of the state bureaucracy. Here Ricci borrowed
from Francis Xavier and Simão Rodrigues, who traveled to the court of
King João III of Portugal under the protection of Pedro de Mascarenhas, a
member of the high aristocracy who had served his king as ambassador to
Rome. Xavier, in turn, had been sent on to Goa at the request of the king
himself, thereby cementing the links between the crown and the Jesuit
missions in Asia. If Ricci could do the same in China, he and his fellow
missionaries would have free rein to carry out their proselytizing enter-
prise there.
Lacking the common religious ground for establishing new friendships
with potential protectors which had worked so well among Europeans,
Ricci was forced to adjust these familiar Jesuit tactics to new circum-
stances. Instead of relying on shared faith, he appealed to the moral sensi-
bilities of the mandarin elite and to their taste for the exotic with his rhe-
torical skills. In some respects, this was what Ruggieri had done in the first
years he had spent in China. By the mid-1590s, however, Ricci was already
a very accomplished linguist whose command of Chinese learning made
him a more skillful communicator than his former companion. In fact, in
1595 he translated a series of aphorisms from “Western Sages” such as
Cicero and Seneca and published it under the title Jiaoyun lun (On
Friendship).37 Ricci hoped that those literati who read his book would
take a liking to him, and that amity would in turn lead to protection and
patronage. Most important, Ricci was ready to exploit the connections he
had made with his mandarin friends, willing to gamble the fate of the
mission on his ability to win new allies, and able to deploy linguistic
sleight of hand to his advantage. Thankfully for the Jesuits, the prevailing
intellectual climate among the educated elite of late Ming China was pro-
pitious for such a risky venture. That Ricci combined moral austerity, eru-
dition, and technical skills with the capacity to make himself understood
made him an attractive figure to his literati interlocutors.
Matteo Ricci’s chance for carrying out his plan came in early 1595,
when one of his mandarin acquaintances headed to the capital to receive
42
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a higher bureaucratic dignity. This official is referred to in missionary
sources as “Scielou” (alias “Xeije”), a senior military mandarin whose true
identity has eluded scholars.38 In this official’s journey north, Ricci saw
“such a good occasion to be able to lean on such a great and powerful
mandarin.” The Jesuit even told his escort that “we other literati” had a
strong desire to see the imperial court, but that the mandarin had warned
him against proceeding beyond Jiangxi Province (the first inland province
north of Guangdong).39 In light of the fact that Ricci was a foreigner,
Scielou also told him not to attempt going to Peking or Nanjing. Yet Ricci
was not daunted by this admonition since, as he explained in a letter to
his superior, he knew the stakes were high: “Until we have a foothold in
one of these two royal cities we will always live in fear of losing this mis-
sion to China.”40 With this conviction, he sailed through Jiangxi in early
1595 to establish a residence in Nanjing.
On his way north, Ricci made an audacious change in his visual ap-
pearance. At the suggestion of Qu Taisu (1549–1611), a lower-level literatus
who would later become a convert, Ricci discarded his Buddhist robes in
favor of dressing after the fashion of the mandarins. His primary aim was
to leave behind any a priori association that might be made between him-
self and the Buddhist clergy because of his clothing—especially since
these priests, the “bonzes,” had reached the nadir of their public reputa-
tion during the Wanli era.41 While the Jesuits would never sit for the state
examinations, and thus never gain the shengyuan (bachelor), juren (licenti-
ate), or jinshi (doctor) degrees of their literati peers, the keys to social sta-
tus and political power in late imperial China, they wanted to be accepted
on Chinese terms as learned men. Writing to Duarte de Sande, Ricci
stressed that his gesture would enable the missionaries “to leave behind
the name of bonzes, which among the Chinese is held as vile and lowly,
and take the name of literati.” In addition to donning the robes used by
the elite when they went calling on one another, Ricci went on, he had
grown his hair and beard à la chinoise. Attempting to relate his new garb
to his superior in Macau, Ricci explained that his robes were made of dark
purple silk lined with blue trim “very similar to what the Venetians use in
Venice.”42
Ricci’s move to associate himself more closely with the public percep-
tion of the educated (not to say powerful) classes in Chinese society
would have long-lasting repercussions for the mission. For one thing, it
put him and the missionaries who emulated him in a new category for
43
An Uneasy Foothold F


their Chinese observers. Seeking to avoid burdening their gospel and their
lifestyle with negative associations, Ricci and his successors blurred the vi-
sual distinction between the religious and secular spheres of Chinese soci-
ety. They attempted to benefit from the social prestige of the literati (and,
ultimately, the mandarins) by talking and dressing like them; at the same
time, they bore a religious message, something not ordinarily considered
the province of ru (scholars). Although there is much debate over just how
divided the religious and secular spheres were in late Ming China, it is un-
deniable that with this move the Jesuits created a sense of ambiguity about
their social function. Their use of Confucian philosophy as an indigenous
support for their religious teachings (that is, as a valuable moral comple-
ment to Christian revelation, in the mold of Greek and Roman thought)
served to confuse established Chinese categories even more. While at least
one scholar has argued that the image of the “missionary literatus” was a
primary reason for the failure of the Jesuits’ religious message to take
hold in China in the way that Buddhism—another foreign religion—had
done, Ricci’s move to emulate an elite model paid off handsomely from
the start.43
On another level, Ricci’s change of clothes can also be seen as the cul-
mination of a process of rationalizing missionary tactics to serve what the
Jesuits understood as the ultimate goal of their mission: the conversion of
the Chinese to Christianity. In this respect, the choices made by Ricci
were characteristic of the new forms of Catholic pastoral activity being de-
veloped at the time in Europe. In China, Ricci was one of the farthest-
flung representatives of a typically Jesuit or, more specifically, Ignatian
spirit that subsumed the means of sparking conversions or spiritual invig-
oration to the ends—ad maiorem Dei gloriam. Defending his confrere’s
shift in strategy to the members of the Society of Jesus in Europe, Duarte
de Sande wrote: “In truth, among these nations that are so distant from
ours, and have laws and customs so different, it is necessary to enter with
theirs to come out with ours, accommodating ourselves to them in what
our Holy Faith permits, in this way to divulge and teach our holy doc-
trine, which they would receive in no other way.”44 Ricci’s attempt to put
himself fully into a Chinese frame of reference is one of the better-known
instances of “accommodation,” the modern name for a strategy of attract-
ing converts to Christianity that would later be found at the center of the
Chinese Rites controversy, both lauded and condemned.
Although Matteo Ricci’s trip into the heart of the Ming empire in 1595
44
E charting the course


would later be seen as a great step forward for the mission, it did not seem
so at the time. The Jesuit wrote how the handlers of his mandarin escort
had repeatedly begged him not to enter Nanjing and, if he did, then “at
least not to say that he had come with them or their mandarin.” Yet Ricci
was unfazed by their injunctions. As soon as he bid them adieu at the city
gate, he found a place to stay and “did nothing else” than say that he had
arrived with Scielou.45 In his new courtesy clothing, he also sought out a
mandarin he had known in Guangdong who was serving in the Ministry
of Rites. But this reunion did not go as well as Ricci intended. After a cor-
dial welcome, his host flew into a rage at the missionary’s presence—
“with such exasperation and fury that he seemed crazy”—insisting that
he had considered the Jesuit a suspicious character ever since they first
met in Canton. Without further ado, Ricci was expelled from the capital
and forced to retreat southward. Chastened and “very confused” by the
encounter with this mandarin, he headed to Nanchang, the capital of
Jiangxi Province, where Scielou had first instructed him to go.46
At Nanchang, Ricci’s new strategy worked better. His overtures to local
officials were more successful there, and soon he declared to his superiors
that he had secured “safe terrain” for the mission.47 Choosing to remain in
Jiangxi until another opportunity to head for the capital manifested itself,
Ricci consolidated his efforts by summoning João Soeiro and Sebastião
Fernandes from Shaozhou to man the residence he had acquired. The site
of the new Jesuit house at Nanchang gave Ricci reason to be optimistic
about the prospects of carrying out his original plan to pitch the Christian
message to the emperor. Far away from the court, and close by to the mis-
sionaries, there lived a large population of distant imperial relatives, called
wangfu, some of whom might recommend Ricci to their august kin. But
his efforts among these men and women, like those among other seg-
ments of the city’s population, did not meet with success.48 As a somewhat
embarrassed Ricci wrote to a Jesuit friend in Italy in late 1595, “Do not ask
me how many thousands of souls I have converted, but only how many of
those millions I have told for the first time that ancient news that in
heaven lives a God, the creator of heaven and earth.”49
But beyond the confines of coastal Guangdong, in one of the central
provinces of the Ming empire, Matteo Ricci still harbored the desire to
present himself to the highest levels of political power with the aim of
winning new friends. The opposition encountered by the Jesuits at both
Shaozhou and Nanchang convinced Ricci and his superiors of the need to
45
An Uneasy Foothold F


seek more solid protection for the mission. As one Jesuit at Macau put it
regarding the efforts of his confreres in Jiangxi Province, “The Christians
are still very few and, speaking candidly, always will be until we have per-
mission from the King of China to be in his lands without any interfer-
ence.”50 Visitor Alessandro Valignano agreed with Ricci on the need to at-
tempt another journey to Nanjing, the former Ming capital city still
invested with the bureaucratic trappings of a metropolis. He named Ricci
mission superior in 1597, and dispatched a shipment of European gifts to
Nanchang for him to distribute to prominent mandarins on the occasion
of a second trip to the southern capital. Ricci set out for Nanjing in 1598
in the company of Lazzaro Cattaneo but passed through that city and fol-
lowed on to Peking. Rebuffed in this first sally to the northern capital, he
returned to Nanjing to found the mission’s third residence.
By the time Ricci settled in the former Ming capital, his investment in
Chinese literati culture was paying substantial dividends. Building on the
reputation he had gained in Jiangxi, he was able to attract the attentions
of members of the provincial literati circles in the Jiangnan region, the
area surrounding Nanjing. Attracted by his collection of maps, globes,
prisms, European books and oil paintings, curious members of the elite as
well as plebeians flocked to the Jesuit residence, where they heard Ricci
discourse on things Western. His talks invariably ended with a reference
to Christianity. Letters from the missionaries at the turn of the seven-
teenth century speak of their technique of attempting to convert educated
Chinese by exposing them to an amalgam of European moral, scientific,
and religious teachings that would become known among late Ming lite-
rati as Tianxue, Learning from Heaven.51 The Jesuits quickly realized the
value of their scientific ideas for their interlocutors and tried to attract
converts “through the door of Mathematics.”52 With Cattaneo’s help,
Ricci preached to the visitors who came to their residence, solidifying his
reputation as a scholar in the Chinese tradition. This was an extremely ef-
fective strategy in Jiangnan, where a dense network of rich cities boasted
the highest concentration of mandarins, literati, and retired officials in the
empire. The conversion of a handful of retired mandarins was the mis-
sionaries’ reward for their efforts.
Buoyed by Ricci’s growing fame at Nanjing, the Jesuits in Shaozhou
and Nanchang tried to replicate his methods. They too adopted literati
dress and set about studying Confucian philosophy with the aim of as-
suming a socially important identity that would at once win protection
46
E charting the course


and impress prospective converts. But their conversations focused on
Tianzhu jiao, the Teachings of the Lord of Heaven, the religious compo-
nent of Tianxue. According to the tallies of baptisms that they recorded,
this strategy worked with varying degrees of success. For instance, there
were only about twenty Christians at Nanchang in 1603 despite the fact
that a sickly João Soeiro had lived there for six years by that point. During
his convalescence, the Jesuit composed a short tract in dialogue form on
the basic concepts of Christian belief, titled Tianzhu shengjiao yueyan
(Brief Introduction to the Holy Religion of the Lord of Heaven).53 When
Soeiro’s health finally returned in 1604, his relations with the local manda-
rins improved and the “fire of conversion began to rage.” That year, the
missionary claimed close to three hundred converts.54 The work of the Je-
suits who stayed behind in northern Guangdong appears to have taken off
earlier. The Sicilian Niccolò Longobardo (1565–1654), a recent arrival, re-
corded a harvest of two hundred converts as early as 1602, including a
substantial number of villagers from the area outside Shaozhou. His re-
port even noted that many of the Christians in that area were women, the
wives of men who had submitted to baptism. The Jesuits were especially
impressed that these women could “recite Christian doctrine from the be-
ginning to the end” when examined on the subject.55
It is worth pausing to underscore these early efforts to convert ordi-
nary Chinese men and women, since the notion that the Society of Jesus
sought only mandarin conversions has long been a defining characteriza-
tion of the mission. It is understandable why scholars have reached this
conclusion, given that the Jesuits had to address the political necessity of
projecting their message to the governing elite of China, not to speak
of their equally exigent need to trumpet conversions to Christianity from
the ranks of the mandarins to their superiors, aristocratic patrons, and
the many other readers of their published correspondence in Europe.
In fact, a superficial overview of the documents produced by the mission-
aries would lead one to assume that the Jesuits were almost exclusively
interested in the Chinese literati. But if one reads the same materials
more closely, it becomes difficult to draw the conclusion that the Jesuits
defended a method of evangelization “from the top down.” It is there-
fore incorrect to assert, as many scholars have done, that the Jesuits’ strat-
egy in China was to focus on the elite and that only the Mendicant fri-
ars who arrived in later decades aimed to convert the lower ranks of
society.56
47
An Uneasy Foothold F


While it is clear from archival evidence that the few mandarin converts
made by the Jesuits represented victories for the mission and as such were
widely celebrated, the missionaries were not the upholders of a simplistic
logic which dictated that if the elite converted, so too would the plebs.57
At most, Matteo Ricci and his followers hoped that the image of Chris-
tianity in China would benefit from the conversion of literati or manda-
rins. In the words of Niccolò Longobardo, the presence of individuals of
high social standing within neophyte communities helped both the priests
and their Christians: “When something happens that calls our enterprise
into question, it is a great shield and succor for us to say that so-and-so
and so-and-so already follow this new law.”58 Yet these converts were
merely the icing on the missionaries’ cake. It is clear from their writings
that the Jesuits sought to make new Christians from all ranks of Chinese
society and that they proselytized the lower orders whenever it was possi-
ble for them to do so.59
The Jesuits knew better than to count on many baptisms among the
elite. They realized that various social impediments prevented mandarins,
gentry, and literati of whatever level from becoming Christians. Foremost
among these obstacles was the practice of taking concubines as a symbol
of status or to ensure producing an heir. The missionaries insisted that a
Christian man could have only one wife. As virtually all Chinese men
with sufficient wealth had concubines who had borne them children, this
requirement meant repudiating these women for the new religion’s sake.
As mandarins were public figures who sought the estimation of their
peers, they were wary of adopting a foreign religion at the cost of an ad-
verse effect on their careers. Some Christian ritual practices, such as hav-
ing to kneel before a priest in order to confess, also appear to have dis-
suaded members of the elite from baptism.60 Given these constraints,
many of the mandarins who were baptized during this early period were
retired officials old enough to dispense with any concubines and persons
no longer dependent on others who might not favor Christianity. Even so,
the Jesuits were candid about their dealings with members of the Chinese
elite, at times striking a defensive tone: “The fathers of the Society in
China do not enjoy dealing with or befriending the Magistrates for any
other reason except that it is necessary for the Christian community, be-
cause if they do not convert as we desire, at least we seek to build and cul-
tivate the church in their shadow and with their help, since without their
favor it is all built on sand.”61
48
E charting the course


In the Classroom of Heaven, 1601–1607
By May 1600, Matteo Ricci had cultivated his persona as a Xiru, or West-
ern scholar, at the southern capital for almost two years and was eager to
present himself to the highest ranks of Chinese officialdom at Peking.
When fresh orders arrived from Alessandro Valignano to attempt another
journey northward, he was ready. To be sure, with eight Jesuits (including
the two Chinese coadjutors) already inside the Ming empire, the Visitor
was not taking a dangerous risk. Rather, he felt on the basis of Ricci’s as-
sessments that the time was ripe for his subordinate to gather his most
precious European gifts and head to the capital to win new mandarin al-
lies. Ricci set out in the company of Diego de Pantoja (1571–1618), a Span-
iard who had reached Macau in 1597, and the two coadjutors, Fernandes
and Martins. The party included an indispensable native escort, a re-
spected palace eunuch. Thanks to Ricci’s reputation, his escort was able to
clear many of the obstacles created by other mandarins and eunuchs
opposed to the Jesuits’ journey to Peking. Yet despite the prohibitions
against foreigners visiting the capital independent of fixed tribute embas-
sies, Ricci continued northward. When he was imprisoned in Tianjin for
his illegal progress, a command from the Wanli emperor secured his re-
lease in recompense for a clock and a set of oil paintings.62 This show of
imperial favor was the first in a series of tacit demonstrations of approval
that culminated in the permission obtained by the missionaries to reside
in Peking.
With the Jesuits’ arrival at the imperial capital in late January 1601, a
central goal of Matteo Ricci’s strategy for securing the mission had been
accomplished. With a Jesuit ensconced at Peking—by order of the em-
peror himself—the reputation of the Society of Jesus in China would im-
prove along with that of Ricci himself. It is not easy to overstate the
importance of Ricci’s acceptance at court. The fact that he quickly became
a minor celebrity at the capital was crucial for the safety of the mission
and its future expansion. As soon as Ricci and Pantoja settled down, they
drew a stream of mandarin and literati visitors curious to see the exotic
goods they had brought to present to the emperor. According to one of
the first accounts from the capital, the missionaries entertained a manda-
rin from the Lipu (Ministry of Rites, the agency in charge of dealing with
foreigners) by demonstrating that “the Sun is larger than the Earth and
the Moon smaller.” Another mandarin who had been impressed by Ricci’s
49
An Uneasy Foothold F


“On Friendship” visited the Jesuits and offered them help in securing a
residence outside the quarters reserved for foreign delegations.63 Ricci’s
colleague Pantoja contributed to the renown of the missionaries with his
blue eyes alone: “The Chinese find them very mysterious, and normally
say that my eyes spy where to find precious stones and the like . . . claim-
ing even that they have characters written inside them.”64
The fame of the Jesuits at the capital was essential for legitimizing the
efforts of the missionaries in the southern provinces. As soon as news of
Ricci’s reception began to spread via the words and letters of his literati ac-
quaintances, the fortunes of the missionaries in Nanjing, Nanchang, and
Shaozhou improved. When they came under the suspicion of local of-
ficials, the other Jesuits invoked Ricci’s name—or, rather, the name of his
alter ego, Li Madou, their famous colleague. For instance, when Niccolò
Longobardo was brought before the city magistrate in Shaozhou in 1605,
he mentioned his contacts with Ricci to a visiting provincial official. Since
this superior official had heard of Li Madou and knew how he had been
received at court, he ordered the local magistrate to drop his case against
the missionary.65 Although Ricci’s fame would not insulate the Jesuits
from all attacks—including the verdict of a Nanchang magistrate in 1607
in favor of a group of literati who denounced Christianity as a heterodox
sect—it certainly helped dampen some early flares of persecution.66
Beyond providing protection for the mission’s established residences,
Ricci and Pantoja’s installation at the capital also permitted the geographic
expansion of the Jesuit enterprise. Owing to the Jesuits’ growing network
of friendships at Peking and the constant motion of the mandarin cogs in
the machinery of the massive Chinese bureaucracy, it was not long before
news of the missionaries and their message reached the far corners of the
empire. Ricci was helped in no small measure by the presence of throngs
of metropolitan examination candidates who traveled to the capital every
three years. These mandarins were eager to get copies of his books on
Learning from Heaven.67 Some of them chose to become Christians and
implored the Jesuits to accompany them to their civil service postings in
the provinces.
In the first years of the seventeenth century, there were too few mission-
aries on the ground in China for such requests to be considered. Even so,
Ricci had scored a major coup by situating himself close to the beating
heart of the late Ming state. As much as any one man could, he had har-
nessed the mission to the dynamism of the Chinese bureaucracy, estab-
50
E charting the course


lishing an expansive network of correspondents, allies, and converts. But
this link to the motion of the civil service came at a price. A Christian
mandarin’s reassignment to an area with no priest could mean the poten-
tial loss of a proportionally large group of converts. As João da Rocha re-
marked at the departure of a converted military mandarin from Nanjing
to Henan Province with his entire household, “We are left with one less
parish.”68
Matteo Ricci’s success at Peking, however, was a double-edged sword,
something that has not been adequately recognized by historians. By
underscoring the importance of his arrival at the capital, scholars have
rightly recognized his most important legacy but have missed its unin-
tended consequences. For despite the high profile of the Peking house and
the crucial role it played in securing the safety of the other mission sta-
tions, its locus at the heart of the Chinese state removed Ricci and his
court Jesuit successors from contributing fully to the religious goals of
their collective effort—the conversion of the Chinese to Christianity.
Since most of the Peking missionaries’ time was consumed by dealings
with literati, including the various scientific projects that would emerge
from Ricci’s fame as a mathematician and astronomer, they spent less time
preaching the gospel. This is not to say that the Jesuits saw their sacred
and profane duties as mutually exclusive, but rather that it is very easy to
arrive at a skewed vision of the Jesuit enterprise if one focuses only on the
missionaries at the court. An exaggerated emphasis on Ricci and his suc-
cessors in Peking, a view that has long characterized histories of the mis-
sion, has almost completely overshadowed the work of Soeiro, da Rocha,
Longobardo, and Cattaneo, who were busy propagating Christianity at
the Jesuits’ other residences.69
The great interest generated by the adventures of the Europeans at the
Ming court makes it understandable why the image of the Peking Jesuits
became the mission’s prevailing cliché. Their reputation, after all, was
rooted in reality. In keeping with Matteo Ricci’s impression that the Jesu-
its should do nothing at court, including any rigorous proselytizing, that
might harm “the pleasant odor of our faith” or—perhaps more impor-
tant—“la fama de’ Nostri,” the missionaries’ first years at Peking were pri-
marily devoted to improving their reputation.70 Their primary activities
consisted of receiving guests and entertaining visitors, as well as writing
treatises on academic or religious topics. In addition to composing an in-
troduction to the fundamental Christian teachings, Tianzhu shiyi (The
51
An Uneasy Foothold F


True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, 1603), Ricci produced a further text
which included references to teachings drawn from classical authors such
as Epictetus, Ershiwu yan (Twenty-five Sayings, 1605), and a set of essays
recording his debates with Chinese literati, Jiren shipian (Ten Essays on
the Extraordinary Man, 1608). For all of his writings, the Jesuit received
assistance from his literati acquaintances to make his texts as stylistically
elegant as possible.
It was thanks to their knowledge of European science and technology
that the Peking Jesuits gained their greatest renown among the late Ming
literati. Ricci himself had studied under Christoph Clavius (1538–1612),
the famed Jesuit mathematician in Rome, and regularly discoursed on sci-
entific matters. But while neither Ricci nor his successors at the court
were “scientists” in the modern sense, their education in European Jesuit
colleges had provided them with a basic background in astronomy, math-
ematics, and natural philosophy. After all, the curriculum there included
the likes of Aristotle, Euclid, and Sacrobosco. As the value of such scien-
tific knowledge for the Peking residence—and, by extension, the whole
China mission—became apparent to the Jesuits, they began to devote
more of their time to scientific endeavors. Ricci first linked the missionar-
ies to the sciences in Chinese eyes when he worked with Xu Guangqi
(1562–1633, jinshi 1604) and Li Zhizao (1565–1630, jinshi 1598), two high-
ranking mandarins who would become converts, on a series of mathemat-
ical treatises including a translation of Euclid’s Elements of Geometry (Jihe
yuanben, 1607). So important were these endeavors to the mission that by
1613 the Jesuits would candidly state to their superiors in Rome that the
Peking residence served uniquely “to legitimize the Society in this king-
dom.” Therefore, its priests were to proselytize less and focus on “mathe-
matics and similar things, which have been shown to be apt tools toward
this end.”71
Although the Peking Jesuits did attempt to form a Christian commu-
nity at the capital, there were fewer converts at the court than in other cit-
ies. Ricci conceded that despite his efforts, “the number of baptized indi-
viduals was not what was desired.”72 Another Jesuit would claim, however,
that while “the Peking natives are very difficult to convert,” those who did
become Christians showed considerable fervor.73 Undistracted by large
numbers of neophytes, the priests could dedicate whatever time they al-
lotted to pastoral work to providing their flock with focused spiritual
guidance. One result of this concentrated attention was the precocious es-
52
E charting the course


tablishment of the mission’s first devotional confraternities. While it is
clear that the initiative to form the first such association came from a Chi-
nese Christian known as Lucas Li and that it was fashioned largely after
the common forms of Chinese groups of Confucian or Buddhist inspira-
tion, it is no less clear that Matteo Ricci guided the group’s founder by
providing him with information about Jesuit Marian sodalities popular in
Europe at the time. When the group was inaugurated on September 8,
1609 (the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin), it provided a venue for the
local Christians to display and encourage their piety.74 So well received
was this new form of lay devotion that a second Sodality of the Blessed
Virgin (Shengmu hui) was founded the following year in Nanjing to struc-
ture the devotions of the southern capital’s converts.
News of Ricci’s reception at Peking bolstered Jesuit expectations for the
mission while sparking rumors about missionary successes in China that
spanned the globe. In the first decade of the seventeenth century, a combi-
nation of misunderstood insider reports and word-of-mouth exaggera-
tions by Europeans in Maritime Asia led some as far away as Rome to be-
lieve that many important mandarins had submitted to baptism. The
most far-fetched of these canards claimed that the Wanli emperor himself
had accepted Christianity—obviously foreshadowing the mass conversion
of the Chinese to Roman obedience. On the basis of letters from Ricci
and the other missionaries, however, Jesuit superiors at Macau were wiser
to the reality of the mission. The fruits of twenty years’ labors in China
were modest at best. To their credit, the Jesuits had established residences
in the two imperial capitals, as well as in two provincial cities. They had
also gained renown among the ruling class and had made important
friendships with high-ranking mandarins. Yet by their own admission, the
Jesuits could claim fewer than one thousand Chinese Christians in 1605.75
When contrasted with the results achieved by the Jesuits in Japan, who re-
ported hundreds of thousands under their spiritual care, including a large
number from the warrior aristocracy, the China mission was worryingly
unproductive. After all, even religious orders had to mind their balance
sheets.
The provincial hierarchy in Macau was further disabused of any over-
blown assessments of Jesuit successes in China when it sent its first Visitor
to inspect the southern residences. Knowing that Ricci could not leave Pe-
king to review the work of his colleagues in person, Valignano assigned
the task to Manuel Dias the elder (1559–1639), a senior Jesuit from Portu-
53
An Uneasy Foothold F


gal who had served as rector at the College of Macau. The Visitor ap-
pointed Dias as the superior for the residences at Shaozhou, Nanchang,
and Nanjing, and instructed him to verify the numbers and quality of
Chinese neophytes.
After completing his initial tour of these houses in 1604, the inspector
sent word to the highest authorities of the Society of Jesus in Rome that in
fact there were few “important” converts. Even those mandarins who had
accepted baptism along with the other members of their households ac-
counted for only a handful of Christians. With regard to the spread of ru-
mors, Dias assured his superiors that he would tell them no more about
“what the priests here would do, but what really went on.” Although he
did find nascent communities of Christians frequenting the sacraments
during his visit, Dias realized that it would require more effort for those
churches to strike deeper roots. As for the emperor, he was neither “Chris-
tian, nor is there hope for this.” Nevertheless, Dias wrote of the rumor,
“God willing, it will prove a prophecy of what is to come.”76
With such sobering warnings about the lack of results from the mis-
sionaries inside the Ming empire, it would have been possible for the hier-
archy of the Society of Jesus at Macau to write off the China enterprise.
After all, they were also responsible for the welfare of the Japan mission,
which in 1600 counted 30 residences, 123 Jesuits, and 90 seminary stu-
dents—not to mention scores of Christian communities.77 To this serious
if mundane concern was added the specter of bloody persecution. After
the first anti-Christian edicts were issued by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1587,
it would be only a decade before Japan’s Christians and their priests would
begin to receive the palms of martyrdom.
The amount of administrative attention lavished on the great Jesuit en-
deavor in Japan far outweighed that devoted to China, making it hard for
Ricci, Sande, and Dias to attract financial donations from pious laymen
or to lure new missionaries to join their efforts. The China Jesuits im-
plored their confreres in Europe to consider missionary vocations in the
Ming empire, and not to dismiss the prospect of working there because of
what they might have heard about the exotic customs of the Japanese.
Somewhat disingenuously, Manuel Dias insisted that potential recruits
should be informed that China was “almost like Europe, because they eat
the same meats and rations as there, sit in tall chairs, sleep on cots and
other similar things.”78 Yet for the bulk of the zealous young Jesuits who
petitioned to become missionaries, such claims of urbanity were appar-
54
E charting the course


ently less persuasive than grim tales of dying for the faith in Japan—an at-
traction the China mission did not offer in the early 1600s.
The one Jesuit who had the greatest stake in making sure that the
China enterprise did not languish was Alessandro Valignano. In 1604, just
two years before his death, the Visitor made a set of decisions of enduring
consequence for the mission. Perhaps the most critical was the removal of
the China mission from the supervision of the rector of the College of
Macau. This decision meant that the mission superior (then Ricci) be-
came directly responsible to the head of the Society’s Province of India, a
step aimed at taking China out of the shadow of Japan and giving it
greater institutional autonomy.79 Valignano once again contributed to
plans for the mission’s future when he dispatched a group of priests, the
Italian Alfonso Vagnone (1568–1640) and two Portuguese, Pedro Ribeiro
(1570–1640) and Gaspar Ferreira (1571–1649), to Nanjing to begin study-
ing Chinese.
The Visitor also sent a procurator to Rome to conduct business on be-
half of the East Asian missions. This priest was to present himself to the
Superior General of the Society of Jesus and the Portuguese Assistant (the
Superior General’s aide for affairs relating to the Portuguese Assistancy,
the administrative unit comprising the provinces of Portugal, Brazil, In-
dia, and later Japan and China) and request the separation of the Japan
and China missions from the control of the Province of India. While in
Rome, the procurator was also to inform both the Superior General and
the pope of the “great hopes” that the China mission inspired, using this
prospect to advance the request for an endowment. He was, moreover, to
visit Madrid to plead with Philip III of Spain and the Council of Portugal
for further financial support.80
When Valignano died in 1606, after over thirty years as the Society’s
supreme official in Asia, the China mission bore the clear imprint of
his foresight and leadership. Although his death cannot be seen as a
definitive watershed in the mission’s history, it was an indicator of how
far the Jesuits’ enterprise had come since the Visitor ordered Michele
Ruggieri to study Chinese in 1579. By the second half of the first decade of
the seventeenth century, the Jesuits—that is, the handful of men led
by Matteo Ricci who presented themselves as Western scholars—were a
known quantity in China. They manned residences in four cities and
gained ever greater renown as more and more curiosity seekers sought
them out. Their religious message had begun to attract adherents, though
55
An Uneasy Foothold F


in smaller numbers than the Jesuits hoped and envisioned. Compared to
other mission fields, gaining Christians in China required a considerable
investment in time, money, and luxury goods. Even after much effort and
expenditure, the results remained uncertain. Yet the Society of Jesus had
an interest in seeing this endeavor through. That is why Valignano and his
Roman superiors indulged Ricci in his long years of studying Chinese
thought and entertaining the curiosity of literati, willing to wait and see
whether their patience would pay off. Loath to write off the work of the
missionaries in the provinces, the Society stomached the reports of a mea-
ger crop of converts, seemingly gained one at time. In fact, the mission’s
foundations in China were stronger than outside observers could discern.
The Jesuits’ labors to create a name for themselves and their religion had
sunk deep into the Chinese soil, below the top layer of late Ming society.
Soon enough, those efforts would bear more abundant fruit.
56
E charting the course


2
In the Shadow of Greatness
A fter seven years spent at Peking, Matteo Ricci and his
companions could reflect on the merits of his strategy for establishing the
mission in the political heart of the Ming empire. Their chief concern was
whether they would reap their expected apostolic rewards. By the end of
the first decade of the seventeenth century, it appeared that his predictions
would be borne out, as the Jesuits recruited a few good men as converts—
powerful scholar-officials who both legitimated their message and es-
corted the priests to new mission fields.
But the Jesuits’ growing confidence in Ricci’s achievement did not
mean that they had been formally received into Chinese society by any ex-
plicit decree of welcome or tolerance. Actually, the missionaries’ arrival at
court raised the stakes in the gamble they had made to gain access to the
highest levels of the Ming state. Whether or not they could transform the
goodwill of their allies into an imperial edict in their favor remained
a crucial challenge. To be sure, the Jesuits had latched on to individu-
als who were in the midst of their climb up the ladder of bureaucratic
success; nonetheless, they remained exposed to shifting political winds.
While the climate of political stagnation and institutional decay created
the conditions for a moral and spiritual revival among the elite—a tenor
of anxiety that benefited the missionaries in their apostolic endeavors—it
intensified the rivalries between literati factions. As minor figures in a
grand power struggle, the Jesuits suffered a major setback in the second
decade of the seventeenth century, one that nearly cost them expulsion


from the empire. Cast out of the imperial capitals and forced into hiding,
they survived during the period from 1616 until 1623 thanks only to the
aid of their Christian mandarin protectors.
This exile was a major setback, but it, too, showed that the missionaries
had done well to enlist the support of influential members of the elite.
Eventually the Jesuits regained their mission stations and founded new
ones. When they emerged from hiding, they realized that their enterprise
had more durable foundations than they had thought. Consequently, it
demanded more institutional independence within the Society of Jesus,
that is, further separation from its sister mission to Japan, achieved with
the establishment of the Vice-Province of China in 1619. With renewed
optimism, the missionaries passed on a vision of progress to the next gen-
eration of China Jesuits. Further justification for this change of mood
came with the appointment of the Peking priests to a project for reform-
ing the imperial calendar. This was a substantial step forward, because the
formal integration of the Jesuits at the capital into the state bureau-
cracy permitted their colleagues in the provinces to adopt more aggres-
sive proselytizing strategies. By the 1630s, growing threats of foreign inva-
sion and rising levels of popular anxiety created a fertile ground for their
message. The combination of these factors meant that the Jesuits could
finally stand on their own, stepping outside the shadow of their mandarin
friends.
The Power of Patronage, 1608–1612
Over the course of the mission’s first decades, the Jesuits came to learn the
value of the friendships forged with individual mandarins. But they had
come to China to make converts, not friends. They knew from a tactical
point of view that if they could make Christians of their elite allies, both
their religious message and their enterprise as a whole would benefit tre-
mendously. Still, there was no guarantee that they could bridge the di-
vide between friendship and conversion. Matteo Ricci and his colleagues
knew well that there were a few mandarins whose interest in Tianxue,
or Learning from Heaven, surpassed that of their peers. These four men,
Xu Guangqi ( jinshi degree 1604), Li Zhizao ( jinshi 1598), Yang Tingyun
(1557–1627, jinshi 1592), and Wang Zheng (1571–1644, jinshi 1622), were
members of the bureaucracy who had passed the metropolitan examina-
tions. Of them, Li and Xu reached the highest levels of the civil service,
58
E charting the course


with Xu becoming an Imperial Grand Secretary toward the end of his life.
Crucially for the Jesuits, the men decided to embrace Christianity, receiv-
ing the baptismal names Paulo (1603), Leão (1610), Miguel (ca. 1611), and
Felipe (1616), respectively.1 These elite converts became the mission’s pri-
mary protectors and promoters, publishing books in defense of Christian
doctrine and Western learning, and displaying their friendship with the
Jesuits.
More than just a stratagem for gaining political cover, Ricci’s plan of
winning mandarin allies had another purpose. He wanted Christianity to
be carried around China in the luggage of traveling literati, and his first
elite converts were ideal candidates. Like all members of the mandarinate,
these men were only temporary residents of the capital. As bureaucrats,
they took up posts in distant provinces; as filial sons, they were compelled
by custom to return to their hometowns upon the death of their parents.
Because their adoption of Christianity was made all the more significant
by their high social standing, the Society of Jesus could not forgo the op-
portunity to accompany them on their travels. From their base at Peking,
the Jesuits synchronized themselves with the internal dynamism of the
Ming state. Fortunately for them, the end of the first decade of the seven-
teenth century was a propitious time for letting the movements of manda-
rin allies determine the paths of the mission’s expansion.
The Jesuits’ first chance came in 1608 upon the death of Xu Guangqi’s
father. In keeping with tradition, Paulo had to return to his home in
Shanghai for three years of mourning. Knowing that Ricci could not leave
the capital, Xu requested that one of his subordinates visit him and possi-
bly open a residence. In September of that year, Lazzaro Cattaneo left
Nanjing for Shanghai, where he stayed for two months receiving curiosity
seekers, including many of Xu’s literati friends, as well as common people
and members of the Buddhist and Daoist clergy. Cattaneo found the local
people to be “smart and happy,” with the city folk more “wily” than their
simpler counterparts in the surrounding countryside.2 But although the
Jesuit mission in Shanghai would later account for over a third of all Chi-
nese converts, this initial stay yielded only a modest foretaste of later suc-
cess. Cattaneo claimed forty-two new Christians—in his words, “very few
for such a vast field.” To explain his meager harvest, he acknowledged,
among other obstacles, “the doubts and fears that circulate about us ev-
erywhere.”3
While the Jesuits did not establish a new mission in Shanghai in 1608,
59
In the Shadow of Greatness F


they endeavored to open a residence somewhere in the Jiangnan area out-
side of Nanjing. They waited three years until, at the insistence of Yang
Tingyun and Li Zhizao, they settled in Hangzhou, a thriving metropo-
lis four days’ journey from the smaller city of Shanghai. Both Miguel and
Leão were from Hangzhou and readily proffered protection and financial
support to the Jesuits. In order to strengthen the missionary endeavor in
coastal Jiangnan, Ricci sent Nicolas Trigault (1577–1628), a newly arrived
priest from the Southern Netherlands, together with a Chinese coadjutor
to aid Cattaneo. After a bout of sickness forced the missionaries back to
Nanjing, Cattaneo returned to Hangzhou with other companions in 1612
to lay firmer foundations there. In this way, the missionaries fulfilled the
objectives that lay at the heart of Ricci’s strategy for inaugurating missions
in new areas. They established a small community of religious whose pub-
lic association with influential figures granted them both legitimacy and
visibility.
Once inside the complex world of late Ming literati social relations, the
Jesuits became closely linked to the public identities of their patrons.
Sympathizers with Learning from Heaven emerged from the ranks of the
Jiangnan literati (as did critics), especially since the missionaries’ message
reached beyond the realm of intellectual affinities and into the domain of
religious doctrine. Yang and Li’s prestige brought the first Hangzhou Jesu-
its throngs of visitors predisposed to be impressed with their teachings.
The mandarins were well-known supporters of Tianxue; accordingly, the
greater the complexity of the teachings transmitted by Cattaneo and his
colleagues, the better for Yang and Li. But this formula came at a price for
the missionaries, since too many hours spent discoursing with their hosts
distracted them from preaching the gospel. As a result, the Jesuits refused
Li’s initial offer of a set of apartments inside his palace, choosing a rented
house instead. “We were afraid,” wrote Feliciano da Silva (1579–1614),
“that Doctor Leão would busy us with translating philosophy books and
thereby upset the work of conversion that was the goal and primary fruit
for which we had come.”4
In their promotion of Learning from Heaven, these Christian manda-
rins at the same time implicitly and explicitly criticized Chinese religious
traditions, exacerbating the antagonism between the Jesuits and the Bud-
dhist and Daoist clergy. In late Ming Jiangnan, where gentry and man-
darins lavished patronage on religious establishments, the newly forged
bonds between the Europeans and rich members of the elite provoked
60
E charting the course


clerical ire.5 Moreover, ever since Matteo Ricci had come to his first un-
favorable conclusions about the “bonzes” and the “tausus,” the Jesuits
spared no invective in their published writings on native religious tradi-
tions. And since this handful of renowned literati appended prefaces and
dedications to such attacks, the missionaries’ writings reached greater au-
diences. The Jesuits surely relished the chance to confront adversaries
on religious matters, especially with mandarins in their corner. Their es-
tablishment in Hangzhou, according to a frank admission by Niccolò
Longobardo, who took over as mission superior upon Ricci’s death, was
part of this struggle. When the Buddhist clergy boasted that the priests
would abandon their converts and return to Nanjing, they felt obliged to
stay.6
Matteo Ricci breathed his last in May 1610, but the radiance of his re-
nown continued to be of service to the mission. Certain of the founder’s
fame—greatly increased at the moment of his passing by the crowds
of visitors who came to pay their last respects—his assistants Diego de
Pantoja and Sabatino de Ursis (1575–1620), with the help of some manda-
rin friends, submitted a petition to the Wanli emperor for a burial site
near Peking.7 When their request was granted, accompanied by a procla-
mation praising the virtues of this illustrious foreigner, the Jesuits had
proof of imperial favor that they could broadcast throughout the em-
pire—even if it was customary for the Chinese state to offer burial sites
and boilerplate eulogies for ambassadors who died in China. From the Je-
suits’ perspective, this gesture signaled their firm establishment at the cap-
ital, since they could now refer to their—Confucian—duty to take care of
an ancestor’s tomb in seeking to justify their continued presence there.
João Rodrigues (1561–1633), a veteran of the Japan mission, went so far as
to assert that Ricci had accordingly done “more with his death than with
his life.”8
Scholars tend to see Matteo Ricci’s passing as the end of the mission’s
foundational period. Such a view, however, has exaggerated the link be-
tween this prominent Jesuit and the China enterprise as a whole, dis-
tracted attention from the smooth transition of leadership to Niccolò
Longobardo, and relegated to obscurity the growth in missionary num-
bers that followed quickly after 1610.9 In 1613 alone, four arrivals brought
the total of European missionaries in China to fifteen. This second gener-
ation would carry on the work that Ricci had begun, filling in when older
missionaries died or could no longer bear the burdens of their tasks,
61
In the Shadow of Greatness F


and benefiting from the praise and protection bestowed on them as Li
Madou’s companions.
The change in leadership brought new energy and ideas to the China
mission. It also adjusted the balance between the academic pursuits that
had been the founder’s forte and the proselytizing efforts of the missionar-
ies in the provinces, shifting slightly in favor of the latter. In other words,
upon Ricci’s death the expansion of their Christian communities became
the Jesuits’ foremost concern. For the first time, official reports sent back
from the mission to Europe began to record tallies of converts that passed
the thousand mark.10
Just how many Chinese Christians were there? This question has plagued
the Jesuits’ enterprise since its early years, for many observers have taken
numbers as the only true yardstick of success. If seen in this light, the mis-
sion was a splendid failure, as the total population of China grew from
roughly 260 million in the late Ming period to roughly 310 million in the
early Qing.11 In order to gauge the fluctuations of the mission, it is neces-
sary to have some means of measuring the relative size of the Jesuit enter-
prise in the different Chinese regions. Yet almost all of the relevant infor-
mation comes from missionary pens. Depending on the type of report
examined, the number of Christians varies, typically in proportion to the
size of the intended audience in Europe. Modest estimates appear in inter-
nal Jesuit correspondence. Larger numbers are found in more public doc-
uments, such as the Annual Letters that were written to be read aloud at
mealtimes in the Society’s colleges in Europe. The biggest tallies appear in
printed reports, since their circulation had the three-pronged aim of edi-
fying the readers, boosting the Jesuits’ fame, and attracting financial dona-
tions from pious laymen.
By taking the nature of the sources into account, one can estimate the
size of the Jesuits’ Christian communities at regular intervals. Frequently,
they tell only of the numbers baptized each year, not the total number of
Christians. Moreover, Jesuit sources rarely give figures for the apostasies
that were part and parcel of any missionary enterprise. Nicolas Standaert’s
careful attempt to trace the Chinese church’s growth by compiling the to-
tals provided in both printed and manuscript sources nonetheless con-
firms accelerating growth in the numbers of Christians during these years:
from 1,000 converts in 1606, to 2,500 in 1610, to 5,000 in 1615.12 Although
small in comparison with the rapid pace of expansion and the numbers
previously achieved in Japan—or later claimed in China—the eagerly
62
E charting the course


awaited improvement in the tallies from the Ming empire was greeted
with much enthusiasm in Macau, the Estado da Índia, and Catholic
Europe.
Facing the “Ministers of Satan,” 1612–1618
With Matteo Ricci buried at Peking and mandarin converts openly pa-
tronizing the missionaries in Jiangnan, the Jesuits’ fears of imminent ex-
pulsion had been allayed. Mission superior Longobardo went so far as to
claim in the 1612 Annual Letter to the Superior General of the Society of
Jesus (and all others who read or heard his words) that the missionaries
would never be expelled from the Chinese empire.
In the fashion of a professor of logic at a Jesuit college, Longobardo
gave three arguments to demonstrate why his prognosis was “very proba-
ble.” First, Diego de Pantoja and Sabatino de Ursis were allowed to re-
main in Peking after Ricci’s death and continued to receive the state pen-
sions of their former colleague. As they were prized for their mathematical
and technical knowledge, Longobardo could claim that “the King enjoys
our being in China” and that “there are always favorable mandarins who
assist and defend us.” The mission superior’s other reasons were based on
his perception of the Jesuits’ place in Chinese society. He pointed to what
he took to be Chinese raison d’état, asserting that the Ming rulers were
averse to expelling foreigners who had gained inside knowledge about the
empire. Citing the fact that Muslim traders in Shaanxi Province were not
permitted to leave China after nine years, Longobardo contended that the
Jesuits’ thirty-year stay would surely prevent their expulsion. Finally, at
the most general level, he averred that the fruit of so many years’ residence
had given the Jesuits a fine-tuned sensitivity to Chinese “tastes and hu-
mors.” Proof of this assertion could be seen in the missionaries’ many
friends who, Longobardo stated, “truly know, love, and favor” them. He
confidently concluded that even if persecutions were to impede the course
of preaching the gospel, at worst “they will only send us from one place to
another, or put us in prison; but they will not throw us out of China.”13
Despite Longobardo’s confidence, the Jesuits still faced a serious prob-
lem that had dogged their mission since the 1580s. This was their neces-
sary relationship with the Portuguese at Macau—a tie which ensured that
not just mail but also money and manpower were funneled into China.
After fourteen years of living at Shaozhou, Longobardo was well aware of
63
In the Shadow of Greatness F


the tensions between the colony’s merchants and the Canton mandarins,
who were wary of Portuguese smuggling activities and links to the Japa-
nese. To be sure, dealing with the Europeans was a complex matter for the
Ming government, since its primary aim was to exercise as much control
as possible over an unruly trading zone. Neither permitting the Portu-
guese greater access to the Chinese interior nor destroying their settlement
was a viable option to those officials most familiar with southern China.
Sensing a climate of mandarin anxiety and popular suspicion—in part
based on the fact that the colonists had armed ships and no qualms about
dealing with unsavory merchants—Longobardo informed his superiors
that “all of China is scared of the Portuguese.”14
Whether or not Longobardo was aware of a plan outlined by the gover-
nor general of Guangdong and Guangxi provinces in 1612 to set strong re-
strictions on the coastal areas around Macau and apprised of the debates
that it sparked in Peking remains unclear. It is also difficult to ascertain
how many mandarins were sure of the Jesuits’ connection to the Portu-
guese in the first fifteen years of the seventeenth century.15 But in 1611,
when Longobardo was at Peking, Xu Guangqi informed him on three oc-
casions that some mandarins had denounced the Jesuits as “people from
Macau.” When the mission superior asked this friend if he should come
clean about his links to the colony, he was advised against it, since the
missionaries had everything to lose. Yet despite urging caution, Xu also in-
formed the Jesuits that although a number of mandarins knew that they
depended on Macau, they had chosen to dissimulate.
In the end, Longobardo instructed his subordinates to proceed with
caution and secrecy, avoid going to Macau if possible, and have nothing
to do with the colony in public. Trusting his own vigilance to avoid hav-
ing the Ming authorities “close the door on us” and prevent more mis-
sionaries from getting into the empire, he returned to Guangdong in
1613.16 In view of his fears of an official backlash and popular hostil-
ity, however, Longobardo decamped that same year from Shaozhou to
Nanxiong, the last town inside the border with Jiangxi Province.
Given the administrative structure of the missionary enterprises of the
Society of Jesus in East Asia, the China Jesuits faced a nearly impossible
challenge when they tried to distance themselves from the Portuguese. For
one thing, they were dependent on the Japan mission for their financial
support (although this funding was unreliable). The China mission was
an administrative appendage of its sister enterprise, meaning that its of-
64
E charting the course


ficial business had to be approved by superiors in Macau and Nagasaki.
During the foundational period, Ricci and Longobardo had been con-
fronted with numerous situations that demanded immediate resolution,
yet their subordinate position within the Jesuit hierarchy prevented them
from taking many decisive actions. Only the high esteem they enjoyed in
Alessandro Valignano’s eyes kept their concerns visible to the Society’s of-
ficers outside China, but this intercessor had died in 1606.
Faced with a grave political conjuncture in 1612, Niccolò Longobardo
felt that the mission’s only remedy was to sever its ties to the Province of
Japan. To this end, he appointed Nicolas Trigault as procurator and sent
him to Rome the next year with orders to petition the Society’s Superior
General to split the East Asian missions in two. Longobardo, frustrated by
the lack of response on the part of the Visitor and the Japan Provincial,
chose to address his order’s highest authority directly in order to move out
from the shadow of Japan. If that was to happen, the China superior
claimed, the Superior General needed to learn of the true state of the mis-
sion, as seen from the inside, and create a new province.17 This move
would entail endowing the China enterprise in such as way that it could
truly be independent of Macau. In other words, the procurator’s trip was
to be a fundraising and publicity tour of Catholic Europe.18
By sending Trigault, Longobardo also sought to expose how the China
mission’s subordination to its counterpart in Japan had positively ham-
pered his and his colleagues’ proselytizing efforts. He boldly claimed that
despite years of neglect from its superiors in Nagasaki, the Chinese enter-
prise had grown to five residences and “could open another five in other
provinces with the greatest of ease.”19 Longobardo further justified his
idea of splitting the missions by reiterating his confidence about the Jesu-
its’ status within China. In contrast to the sense of security he felt at
Nanxiong, he uncannily ventured that a bright future was “not certain in
Japan”—only two years before the onset of the bloody Tokugawa era per-
secutions.20
Longobardo’s predictions about the precarious situation in Japan came
to fruition with Shogun Tokugawa Hidetada’s 1614 edict banishing all
Catholic priests from that country. Adding to the difficulties that the
China missionaries had with their superiors outside the Ming empire,
there now came a flood of Jesuit exiles from Japan. The College of Macau
became the Japan mission’s headquarters in exile, and as a result, the con-
cerns of Longobardo and his colleagues were shelved. By the summer of
65
In the Shadow of Greatness F


1615, wrote Lazzaro Cattaneo, the affairs of the mission’s five residences
and eighteen Jesuits were “very poorly governed and provisioned even
worse,” all owing to the turmoil in Japan and Macau. In a letter to the So-
ciety’s Superior General, he echoed Longobardo’s sentiments by claiming
that “it would be much better for this mission if our immediate superior
were absolute.”21
The expulsion of the Jesuits from Japan also spurred the China mis-
sionaries to reaffirm the terms of their stay within the Ming empire. As-
suming that the principal weakness of his confreres had been the fragility
of their relationship with the Japanese hegemons, Longobardo proposed
that the Jesuits make a direct appeal to the Wanli emperor. Fearing that
those he dubbed “the ministers of Satan” might also seek to expel the mis-
sionaries from China as they had done in Japan, he consulted with his col-
leagues about the viability of asking for more explicit terms for their stay
in the empire. Longobardo’s plan was to offer a set of luxurious European
commodities and a synopsis of Christian doctrine (including a protesta-
tion about how the missionaries harbored no seditious intents) to the
throne, and then to wait for some form of recognition.22
But while the mission superior looked south to Macau for problems
and north to Peking for solutions, he glossed over the troubles brewing
between missionaries and mandarins in the heart of the empire. The Jesu-
its were therefore caught off guard when Shen Que (1565–1624), the vice
minister of the Nanjing Ministry of Rites, launched an attack against
them. Much ink has been spilled in the attempt to explain the events
known as the Nanjing affair (sometimes called the Nanjing persecutions),
which occurred between 1616 and 1623, by Chinese brushes and European
quills in the early modern period no less than by Western and Asian schol-
ars in the modern age. Only recently have historians attained an under-
standing of these events that moves beyond presenting the views of the
protagonists.23 For the Jesuits, these events were a calamity, and their writ-
ings from the time in question clearly echo their worry over the fate of the
mission. Conversely, in the view of their Chinese adversaries, the mission-
aries deserved nothing but derision and disdain. There was no sparing of
derogatory names from the literati lexicon. If one looks beyond the sur-
face and within the long-term conspectus of the Jesuit enterprise, how-
ever, it appears that Shen Que’s attacks were not fatal to the mission. They
do not seem to have had any effect other than to check its growth tempo-
rarily.
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E charting the course


The initial accusations brought against the Jesuits at Nanjing contained
a laundry list of complaints that decried them as unorthodox—that is, not
adhering to the Confucian worldview—or as subversive. Seen through the
prism of Chinese law, the missionaries were easy targets. To be sure, they
had played fast and loose with the native symbolic register by passing
themselves off as foreign literati who had come to learn China’s moral
teachings. The Jesuits also dealt in the soft currency of ambiguity when
they tried to use secular skills and learning to achieve religious goals,
thereby crossing a line that more than a few mandarins saw as a clear
boundary. Their apologetic texts on Tianzhu jiao at times further ob-
scured their foreign origins, with the Jesuits trying so hard to make their
message palatable to Chinese scholars that it was stripped of much of
its European savor—giving many literati readers and even some con-
verted mandarins the impression that the Christian message differed only
slightly from Confucian thought.24 Although it had worked well, this
strategy was not foolproof, as the Jesuits found out in 1616 at Nanjing,
which was still a capital like Peking. The missionaries felt that they could
comport themselves there as if in a provincial city, that is, without the re-
serve of their confreres at the northern court. It should come as no sur-
prise, then, that if the contradictions about the Jesuits’ Chinese persona
were to be exposed, it would happen where adversarial political forces had
the most power.
In spite of the institutional decay of the late Ming state, the disengage-
ment of the Wanli emperor from the business of government, and the
high degree of factionalism in the Jiangnan area, officials such as Shen
Que who served at Nanjing could effectively impose their version of Con-
fucian orthodoxy. The actions of this senior official from the Ministry of
Rites (which was charged with maintaining orthopraxis, as well as manag-
ing the affairs of foreigners in China) can be understood as one of the va-
riety of literati responses to the late Ming political situation. The same cli-
mate of anxiety that led men such as Xu Guangqi and Yang Tingyun to
adopt the Teachings of the Lord of Heaven inspired some of their con-
temporaries to turn to stricter interpretations of Confucian orthodoxy or
to encourage the reinvigoration of lay Buddhism.25 That the Jesuits had
become the allies of men who appeared to constitute a rival literati fac-
tion, the followers of Tianxue, or appeared to be seducing commoners like
heterodox sects such as the White Lotus movement, made them worthy of
official attention—especially as the missionaries became more antagonis-
67
In the Shadow of Greatness F


tic toward the Buddhist clergy or showed undue arrogance, born of a false
sense of security, toward members of the Chinese elite.26
Shen Que submitted his first memorial denouncing the missionaries at
the two imperial capitals in the summer of 1616. Historians have disputed
his motivations, but it appears that he moved primarily with the intention
of making a display of the proper way to uphold orthodoxy in the public
arena. It is also likely that Shen harbored a personal resentment toward
some of the Jesuits, their religious teachings, and their mandarin protec-
tors. In his denunciations, found in three distinct documents, he charged
the missionaries with illegally residing in Peking and Nanjing and “injur-
ing the imperial influence.”27 It is worth recalling that when Matteo Ricci
had first tried to settle at Nanjing two decades earlier, his mandarin
friends warned him that foreigners could not reside at either capital.
Using stock phrases from the language of orthodoxy, Shen Que enu-
merated the ways the Jesuits menaced the Ming state. Most important,
their novel teachings on astronomy threatened to corrupt Chinese tradi-
tions.28 In addition, they elided the difference between Chinese and bar-
barians by adopting the manners and dress of the literati. They held secret
meetings in the manner of proscribed groups. They gained conversions
through bribes. They confused the common people. They practiced al-
chemy. They acted as spies on behalf of the Portuguese at Macau. They
owned a residence close to the imperial palace and tomb of the Ming dy-
nasty’s founder at Nanjing, where they encouraged sedition. They had il-
legally acquired houses in other provinces for the same purposes. Finally,
they had usurped the words “Heaven” and “Great” from the emperor to
describe their God and their homeland.29
Shen Que contended that the best way to restore orthodoxy was to ex-
pel the Jesuits from the imperial capitals, denounce their pernicious influ-
ence, and undo the harm they had done to the social order. As soon as his
memorial was favorably received at the Peking Ministry of Rites, he or-
dered the municipal authorities to seize the members of the foreign sect
and their leaders. By September 24, twenty-three local Christians were
imprisoned in Nanjing, along with Alfonso Vagnone, Álvaro Semedo
(1585–1658), and two Chinese Jesuit coadjutors. Despite memorials writ-
ten by Xu Guangqi and the Peking Jesuits in defense of Vagnone and
Semedo, a final verdict came from the throne on February 3, 1617. It de-
creed that they and their confreres at Peking, Sabatino de Ursis and Diego
de Pantoja, were to be shackled inside wooden cages and carted to Can-
ton, from whence they would be sent to Macau and onward to the West.
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E charting the course


As for their residences in the capital cities, the Peking house was shuttered
and the Nanjing residence dismantled. The proceeds from the sale of
its timbers were used for restoring the shrine of a set of Confucian mar-
tyrs and the tomb of a king of Brunei—Shen’s statement of proper rev-
erence to the state and the correct relationship between Chinese and
foreigners.30
As soon as the missionaries in the provinces heard of the fate of their
four colleagues at the two capitals, they went into hiding in their converts’
homes. Once the expulsion edicts were made public, the provincial resi-
dences were also closed. One important measure of the limits of Shen
Que’s power—or perhaps of his will or motivations—was that his attack
was not felt strongly beyond the city limits of the capitals. Fearful of fur-
ther repercussions, however, the remaining Jesuits stayed underground.
But in partial vindication of Niccolò Longobardo’s earlier claim, they were
not expelled from the empire. Nevertheless, the Society’s superiors at
Macau saw yet another baroque tragedy unfolding before their eyes to
match the running drama of the Japan mission. Commenting on the ex-
traordinary twist of fate that had befallen the Jesuits in both Japan and
China, Visitor Francisco Vieira (1555–1619) wrote in 1617: “It serves Our
Lord that of the 5 houses and 5 churches that we had in China, and the
more than 120 that we had in Japan, today not one house nor one church
do we have in which to gather and breathe.”31
Despite the virulence of Shen Que’s attack against the court Jesuits, the
shadow of their mandarin allies was long enough to preserve the mission.
While the Nanjing vice minister of rites was denouncing the Europeans,
Yang, Li, and Xu were busy printing up defenses of Tianxue and its expo-
nents. Yang confronted the accusation that Christianity was akin to het-
erodox sects like the White Lotus or Non-Action movements in a pam-
phlet titled Xiaolun bu bingming shuo, or “The Owl and the Phoenix Do
Not Sing Together” (1616).32 And beyond maneuvering to block the publi-
cation of the edicts against the missionaries in their Jiangnan hometowns,
the Jesuits’ friends offered to shelter them. In light of Visitor Vieira’s order
that no priest leave China alive unless captured and bound—the bit of
wisdom gained from most Jesuits’ willing departure from Japan—the mis-
sionaries secretly made their way to Yang’s palace at Hangzhou by 1618.33
For the next five years, while Shen remained in power, the fourteen Jesuits
who stayed in China (eight European priests and six Chinese coadjutors)
kept a low profile, seeking, as one Jesuit put it, “to avoid giving our ac-
cuser another reason to bark at us.”34
69
In the Shadow of Greatness F


New Portents from Afar, 1619–1623
The greatest immediate consequence of the Nanjing incident, seen from
the Jesuits’ perspective, was that the missionaries were largely cut off from
their nascent communities of neophytes while they waited for the author-
ities’ wrath to ebb. In their writings from the period until 1623, the year
they left Hangzhou, the Jesuits saw their Christians reliving the trials of
the Primitive Church. The missionaries lauded the “valor and constancy”
of their followers, describing how they had retained their faith and aided
their sequestered pastors.35
While the Christians in Hangzhou and Shanghai benefited from the
proximity of priests, those at the capitals were not so lucky. In Peking and
Nanjing, however, the devotional groups that had been founded in 1609
and 1610 served as the principal mechanism for ensuring the cohesion
of the Christian communities. When the Jesuits regained Peking, they
learned that the local Christians had held their confraternity meetings “all
this time, gathering on their appointed days to discuss the things of God
in order to conserve themselves in the faith.”36 At Nanjing, the city’s con-
verts had been divided up into neighborhood groups, each with its own
chapel. Christians congregated there on holy days, wrote Álvaro Semedo,
“and after having recited their devotions held discussions and inspired one
another to virtue.”37 Seeing how effectively such groups could defend the
fledgling church, the Jesuits went on to encourage their formation almost
everywhere they sparked conversions.
Yet given the central importance of the figure of the priest in early
modern Catholicism, with his crucial role in dispensing the sacraments,
the Jesuits resisted being cut off from their neophytes completely. During
the heat of the Nanjing affair, they made extensive use of the Chinese men
who had joined their ranks as coadjutors and had served the mission as
catechists and couriers. Since these men could “go out at any time with-
out anyone’s noticing,” claimed Manuel Dias the younger (1574–1659),
they were best positioned to bring the Eucharist to the sick or to those
who could otherwise not visit the priests. Nevertheless, Dias noted, when
circumstances merited—“such as when they are about to die, or if they
want to confess, or receive some other sacrament”—the priests went out
to their Christians under the cover of darkness in closed sedan chairs.38 As
time went by, the Jesuits at Hangzhou ventured farther and farther from
their base. By early 1618, João da Rocha had taken another priest and two
70
E charting the course


Chinese coadjutors to Jiangxi Province to “visit and reassure” the Chris-
tians there, settling in Jianchang. Likewise, Gaspar Ferreira, who had lived
in the northern capital in Ricci’s last years, spent some time in a town
“two days’ journey from Peking” and went to Nanjing to tend to the
Christians and administer baptisms while Shen Que was still there. Other
Jesuits also left Hangzhou for Shanxi, Huguang, and Guangdong prov-
inces.39
Three years after the start of the Nanjing incident, the Jesuits felt that
their time of trial was ending. Shen Que’s reputation as a defender of or-
thodoxy moved him swiftly to the summit of the bureaucratic ladder, and
he was promoted to Imperial Grand Secretary at Peking in 1620. While he
remained a threat to the Jesuits until his death in 1624, he and the rest of
the late Ming mandarinate were far more preoccupied with the trou-
bles newly affecting northern China than with any problems that might
arise from a handful of Westerners. To be sure, an official crackdown
against White Lotus sectarians and rebels in Shandong Province in 1620–
21 briefly rekindled the fires of persecution in Nanjing.40 A far greater
challenge to the Ming state came with the Manchu incursions into China
that began about 1618 and were to culminate in the capture of Peking in
1644. Soon after the invasion of the Liaodong Peninsula, an area within
striking distance of the imperial capital, fear and rumors spread through-
out China. According to a group of terrified Chinese merchants who
came to Macau in 1618, one Jesuit wrote to a friend in Europe, “even the
Tartars’ horses eat Chinese people, and 100,000 Chinese arrayed against
them are scattered in a flash.”41
Not surprisingly, the Jesuits had an alternative reading of these Manchu
raids. They were clearly a manifestation of divine justice, they claimed.
From Macau, Alfonso Vagnone ventured that the Almighty “wants to give
a great lashing to this kingdom for its many sins and, in particular, for
having thrown out the preachers of the Gospel.”42 By coincidence, the
new military menace was accompanied by a series of natural disasters and
portents that exacerbated the climate of popular anxiety within the Ming
empire. On top of famines and earthquakes, two comets appeared over
China in November 1618. Seeing the nervousness of the Guangdong Prov-
ince mandarins, Manuel Dias the elder at the College of Macau suggested
that these signs could bode “something good for conversions.” Elabo-
rating the point, he claimed, “The Chinese are very quick to attribute
similar portents to some fresh disorder in the kingdom, such as today’s
71
In the Shadow of Greatness F


[To view this image, refer to  
the print version of this title.] 
 
 
 


banishment of the Law of God.”43 As a state of turmoil gripped the em-
pire and its political and economic situation soured, the Jesuits regained
confidence in their enterprise.
The missionaries’ positive outlook was further brightened by the safe
return of procurator Nicolas Trigault to Macau on July 22, 1619. His ar-
rival heralded great changes for the mission in the form of new organiza-
tion, manpower, and material support. Fortunately for Trigault, he had
reached Europe before the worst news of persecution in Japan and China,
so the tenor of his trip matched the optimism of the years before Shen
Que’s attack. Trigault disembarked with seven new priests, money for the
cash-strapped residences, a cache of devotional objects for the Chinese
Christians, costly presents for mandarin allies and the emperor, and a
valuable European library to be used for making an impression on the li-
terati. The most important elements, however, were the recruits from Por-
tugal, Germany, and Italy. Together they formed a band that would be re-
sponsible for the mission for the next four decades: João Fróis (1591–1638),
Rodrigo de Figueiredo (1594–1642), Simão da Cunha (1587–1660), Fran-
cisco Furtado (1589–1653), Johann Adam Schall von Bell (1592–1666),
Johann Terrenz Schreck (1576–1630), and Giacomo Rho (1592–1638).44
Trigault also brought orders from the Roman headquarters of the Soci-
ety of Jesus that created an administrative divide between the East Asian
missions. From 1619 on, the China mission had greater independence
from the withering Japan mission and was renamed the Vice-Province of
China.45 Because of its small number of priests, its lack of a central place
built on the model of the Society’s colleges, and its dependence on exte-
rior sources of funding, it was not designated a full-fledged province.
Rather, this change put a new hierarchy in place for the China mission
without completely divorcing the two Asian missions. Most important,
the finances of the Japan and China enterprises remained intertwined.
The fact that many of the endowments of property or customs duties in
Maritime Asia made by the Portuguese crown and European merchants
before 1600 had been earmarked simply for “the missions in Asia” further
complicated matters.46
73
In the Shadow of Greatness F
Peter Paul Rubens, Portrait of Nicolas Trigault in Chinese Costume. This portrait was
executed during Trigault’s visit to Antwerp as mission procurator in 1617.


This separation gave the China mission a more coherent internal struc-
ture, one that would remain in place into the eighteenth century. By
permitting direct governance by experienced missionaries familiar with
China, it paved the way for the mission’s subsequent growth. The new or-
ganization had a superior officer, the Vice-Provincial, who would rely on a
number of consultors (typically four or five senior Jesuits) to run the mis-
sion’s affairs, distributing supplies and salaries, visiting the residences to
ensure that every Jesuit lived according to the Society’s Constitutions, and
making personnel catalogues that contained evaluations of each mission-
ary for use in promotion decisions. The first priest appointed Vice-Pro-
vincial was João da Rocha, but his death in 1623, as the Jesuits moved to
reestablish the mission, meant that the office was transferred to Manuel
Dias the younger. These men were subordinate to the Visitors, the heirs to
Alessandro Valignano’s office, who resided at Macau and were typically
drawn from the ranks of senior missionaries in East Asia.47
The news of this divide came as yet another crushing blow for the
members of the Japan mission despairing in exile at Macau. Where
Longobardo and the other China Jesuits saw greater administrative ef-
ficiency and missionary effectiveness, their confreres saw betrayal. In light
of the Nanjing affair but also in defense of their corporate interests, the
Japan Jesuits decried the separation as precipitous and potentially harm-
ful—clearly the handiwork of audacious, inexperienced upstarts. Accord-
ing to the opinion of “all of the elder men of this province,” wrote Visi-
tor Francisco Vieira, the split would be “the total ruin of the China
mission.”48 As the Society’s Japan enterprise was slowly dismembered,
leaving a richly endowed college filled with frustrated missionaries, the
friction between the two sets of Jesuits acted as a brake on the China
mission.
Their hands freed, the senior China Jesuits and the Visitors at Macau
devised new regulations for the mission based on forty years of collective
experience. The compendium of rules they issued in 1621 delineated the
obligations of all members of the Vice-Province from the superior to the
coadjutors. It addressed a range of issues from the use of trade to support
the mission, to the proper way of writing Chinese characters, to how the
priests should wear their hair. The duties of the Vice-Provincial were out-
lined, indicating when he was to defer to the Visitor or Japan Provincial in
personnel and financial matters. Jesuits serving as residential superiors
were instructed how to maintain their houses, allot food rations, and reg-
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E charting the course


ulate communal spiritual life. Individual priests were exhorted to study lo-
cal customs so as to avoid provoking scandal and were told to keep regular
devotional schedules. Coadjutors were instructed to maintain a courteous
rapport with the Christians in their communities and to catechize neo-
phytes. The rules also obliged the Jesuits to elaborate a system for teach-
ing Chinese language and thought to newly arrived missionaries.49
The 1621 rules for the Vice-Province also included recommendations
intended to unify the Jesuits’ methods for propagating Christianity. They
standardized pastoral issues such as the proper way to conduct rural mis-
sions, the use of the Portuguese liturgical calendar, and the correct way to
teach baptismal names to converts to avoid mispronunciation. One major
point of contention that was resolved in the rules—as a result of negotia-
tions between Rome, Macau, and the China Jesuits—was the use of sci-
ence as a means not only for spreading Christianity but also for defending
the mission.
According to Sabatino de Ursis, one of the missionaries at Peking, the
Jesuits had been strongly divided over whether they should devote part of
their time to composing books or holding discussions on secular themes.
The flashpoint of this debate was the proper place of mathematics and
morality—instead of the gospel—at the Peking residence. Well aware of
how Western astronomical ideas had made it into Shen Que’s litany of
unorthodox Jesuit teachings, a group of priests at Macau led by Japan Pro-
vincial Valentim de Carvalho (1559–1630) and Visitor Francisco Vieira la-
beled Matteo Ricci’s policies a distraction. Diego de Pantoja, one of the
Peking Jesuits, seconded their opinion that such activities were unfitting
for professed members of a religious order. With Ricci gone, however, the
defense of Tianxue rather than Tianzhu jiao fell to Niccolò Longobardo
and the other senior China missionaries. Despite the claims of several
modern scholars, Longobardo encouraged the use of mathematics, cartog-
raphy, and morality for attracting the Chinese to Christianity.50 But he
also had to manage his fractious subordinates at Peking, whose differences
of opinion were laced with petty jealousy. According to de Ursis, Manuel
Dias the younger, author of Tianwen lüe (Catechism on the Heavens,
1615), which included an appendix summarizing parts of Galileo’s Sidereus
Nuncius (1610), soured on the use of mathematics after a dispute over
which men were assigned to live in the mission’s two houses in Peking.51
In his final adjudication, Superior General Claudio Aquaviva chose a mid-
dle path. The rules he approved contained provisions for the use of sci-
75
In the Shadow of Greatness F


ence, but with the caveat that it not consume a missionary’s time en-
tirely.52
The set of rules also shows how the Vice-Province’s collective attitude
toward the gradual creation of a Chinese church was formalized. The key
elements of what has become known as the “Jesuit position” toward the
Chinese Rites, in particular their approach toward Confucianism as a sec-
ular philosophy and their attitude toward ancestor worship, were decided
by 1621. Understanding that it would take years, if not decades, to form
Chinese Catholics who knew the boundaries between orthodoxy and “su-
perstition,” the Jesuits decided to raise the spiritual demands to be made
on new converts incrementally. For instance, newly converted mandarins
were permitted “for now” to perform the required ceremonies to Confu-
cius, since these were merely “a sign of gratitude to a master.” Likewise,
when ordinary neophytes were given devotional images, they were to be
instructed to display them “in another part far away” from any ancestor
tablets in their homes. The Jesuits also agreed to refrain from telling the
newly converted all of the spiritual obligations of European Catholics,
such as the observances of feasts or fasts, “so as to not make our Holy Law
very burdensome.”53
In order to set the missionaries back on the path to legitimacy in late
Ming society, the 1621 rules contained directives touching on the renewed
promotion of Tianxue, or Xixue, Western Learning. One of the most im-
portant permissions was the right to publish books in Chinese. In Europe,
Jesuit writings underwent a thorough process of revision, including in-
spections by the Inquisition and royal censors, before they appeared in
print. In the absence of any external oversight capable of understanding
Chinese, the missionaries were allowed to publish their writings after an
internal review process.54 By keeping control of the image of Christianity
on the printed page in China, the Jesuits did much to make their trans-
lated version of Catholicism the familiar one that the Chinese knew in the
early modern period.
Finally, the Vice-Province’s founding statutes set out mechanisms to
blunt the impact of future persecutions. Produced only five years after
the outbreak of the Nanjing affair, they insisted on the creation of well-
educated spiritual communities that could resist outside attacks. Although
they conceded to Chinese lay catechists the right to baptize new Chris-
tians, they also ordered priests to examine new converts on basic doc-
trine. In light of the recurrent frustrations over the low numbers of Chi-
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nese Christians, it is somewhat surprising that the 1621 rules specifically
warned the Jesuits against converting more people than the mission could
handle.55 By balancing the mission’s limited manpower and financial re-
sources, the superiors hoped that the Vice-Province would avoid the pit-
fall of simply increasing baptismal tallies at the expense of proper indoc-
trination.
A Difference from Times Past, 1623–1633
With new priests, fresh supplies, and a restored sense of unity and pur-
pose, the Jesuits returned to the mission field in 1623 to bring to fruition
the Vice-Province of China. The previous year, Shen Que retired from his
post as Grand Secretary, and a reprise of the persecution in Nanjing
ended, signaling to the Jesuits that they could emerge from hiding at
Hangzhou to return to their communities and found new ones. Writing
to Visitor Jerónimo Rodrigues (1567–1628) in April 1623, Manuel Dias the
elder claimed that the time was ripe for the missionaries to spread out. It
appears that their mandarin protectors were growing uneasy at the contin-
ued presence of so many Jesuits in their homes. Yang, Li, and Xu insisted
on their departure, according to Dias, because of rumors of impending
government crackdowns on literati factions in Jiangnan. “We are very no-
ticeable,” Dias wrote, “and whoever speaks against us, speaks against them
for harboring us.”56
In sending off their guests, the Jesuits’ mandarin allies offered them ad-
vice for regaining the positions of respect they had once enjoyed. What
they recommended is reminiscent of the main lines of Matteo Ricci’s ini-
tial strategy for establishing the mission: Some Jesuits should try to es-
tablish themselves at Peking and form relationships with high imperial
officials. The patronage of the powerful would encourage provincial au-
thorities, who lived in fear of those higher up the bureaucratic ladder, to
extend de facto tolerance to the Jesuits in their districts. As an added pre-
caution, the rest of the eighteen Europeans and five Chinese coadjutors
should fan out across the provinces “in the shadow of some local or retired
mandarin, through whose intercession they can win friends.”57
Li, Yang, and Xu also contributed materially to making this new strat-
egy work. After the last flares of the Nanjing affair died down, Li Zhizao
submitted a memorial to the Tianqi emperor (r. 1620–1627) proposing
that the Europeans be summoned to the capital as technical advisers in
77
In the Shadow of Greatness F


the war against the Manchus. He lauded their abilities as mathemati-
cians and experts in the design and construction of ordnance, and sug-
gested that they bring with them a contingent of Portuguese infantry and
artillerymen.58 Although the Jesuits initially balked at this project’s belli-
cose implications, Li conjectured that such a venture might win them
commissions in the state bureaucracy. Manuel Dias the younger and
Niccolò Longobardo therefore returned to Peking, where they discovered
a new current of literati interest for both Learning from Heaven and the
Teachings of the Lord of Heaven, in large part owing to Li and Xu’s public
praise for the Jesuits. Seizing the opportunity, some of Nicolas Trigault’s
recruits slipped into China from Macau “in literati costumes, with long
beards, hair grown out and tied on their heads in Chinese fashion.”59
Under the leadership of Vice-Provincial Manuel Dias the younger, who
ran the mission from 1623 until 1635, the Jesuits returned to reinvigorate
their old missions and begin new ones. To be sure, some new residences
were opened before 1623—at Jianchang in Jiangxi Province in 1620, and at
Shanghai two years later. The Jesuits’ friendship with one of Xu Guangqi’s
disciples, Sun Yuanhua (1581–1632, juren 1612), led to his conversion in
1621 and the creation of another new mission station. When licentiate
Inácio Sun invited Francesco Sambiasi (1582–1649) to his hometown of
Jiading, he offered the Jesuits one of his palaces.60 Owing to Jiading’s
proximity to Shanghai and its minute Christian community, the Vice-
Province used this residence for training newly arrived priests in the Chi-
nese language and Confucian philosophy during the 1620s.61
Outside of the Jiangnan region, Giulio Aleni (1582–1649) followed a
converted literatus to Shanxi Province, where he founded a mission at
Jiangzhou. The Christian community in this northern region was to be-
come one of the largest in the Vice-Province after Alfonso Vagnone reen-
tered the Ming empire in 1624 with a different Chinese name. Leaving
northern China, Aleni headed to Fujian Province in the company of for-
mer Grand Secretary Ye Xianggao (1562–1627), a longtime friend of the
Jesuits. Benefiting from Ye’s prestige, he opened a residence at Fuzhou and
began to preach in the coastal towns and cities. Nicolas Trigault headed to
Henan Province in 1623 to establish a house at Kaifeng after visiting Wang
Zheng in his hometown of Xi’an. Trigault’s visit to the Chinese far west
laid the foundations for a residence in that city as well.62 In addition to
setting up these new houses, the Jesuits also tried to enlarge their numbers
of followers in the areas where they had been for years. From Hangzhou,
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they preached in rural Zhejiang Province, baptizing many and going so
far as to christen the towns where converts lived with saints’ names.63 By
spreading out its manpower, the Vice-Province expanded dramatically; by
1626 it counted ten houses, twice what it had prior to the Nanjing affair.
How was the nature of the China mission affected by the geographic
expansion of the Vice-Province? As it distributed missionaries across the
vast expanse of the Ming empire, the Society of Jesus placed an enormous
amount of trust and responsibility in each. After all, Catholic religious or-
ders in the early modern period were typically conceived of in terms of
communal units. At one of the Society’s colleges or professed houses, the
constant presence of superiors kept the obligation to obedience forever
before the eyes of their subordinates. Things were different in the overseas
mission fields. But even when compared to the Jesuit enterprises in South
America or India, the Chinese case was an extreme example of missionary
independence. In order to staff the Vice-Province’s far-flung residences,
individual China Jesuits frequently lived alone, or with one other priest or
coadjutor. Only at Peking and Shanghai were there ever under normal cir-
cumstances four or more Jesuits grouped together. Sheer distance and a
lack of supervision meant that most of the priests were left to their own
devices—and many of them doubtless preferred it that way. In fact, as will
be seen, the most glaring examples of discord occurred when the Jesuits
were forced to confront one another face to face. At those moments supe-
riors could exercise authority directly, but their attempts to curtail the de-
gree of independence encouraged by the very structure of the China mis-
sion were often futile. In this respect, the spread of the Vice-Province was
a mixed blessing. While fulfilling the Jesuits’ dream of propagating Chris-
tianity throughout China, it created administrative problems that later su-
periors would have to resolve if they were to bring about conformity
among their subordinates.
The rapid growth of the mission also raised questions about how the
Jesuits would be able to sustain their promising enterprise. Above all, they
needed replacements, regular shipments of healthy, young priests. But the
bad news from East Asia that had flowed to Europe starting in 1614
gravely affected the Vice-Province’s supply chain, and the China mission
continued to live in the shadow of Japan. Despite the rejuvenating effect
of Trigault’s recruits, by the 1620s its men were old by European stan-
dards. By 1626, in fact, eight of the mission’s eighteen priests were older
than fifty, and five were over forty.64 Manuel Dias the elder put the situa-
79
In the Shadow of Greatness F


tion of the Vice-Province to his superiors in stark terms: without new
blood, the China mission would be “pierced through.” At sixty-four, Dias
could state unequivocally, “Here we are almost all old and dead.”65 Fortu-
nately for the Vice-Province, some missionaries lived to prodigious ages;
Manuel Dias the younger died at eighty-five and Niccolò Longobardo at
eighty-nine.66
Why had the Jesuits been able to spread out so widely? Their erudite
image, promoted via the printed word, was perhaps the main reason.
Knowing the voracious reading habits of his peers, Xu Guangqi had rec-
ommended that the missionaries print “thirty thousand” copies of their
works and distribute them throughout the empire. In this way, they
would ensure that increasing numbers of literati found out about their
teachings, helping the Jesuits to “win friends and credit.” Publications
could also change the minds of those mandarins who were aware of
Shen Que’s defamatory memorials but had never actually met any of the
priests.67 Acting on this suggestion, in the 1620s the Jesuits embarked on
one of their most intense periods of composition and publication. Giulio
Aleni, Francisco Furtado, Manuel Dias the younger, Alfonso Vagnone,
and Niccolò Longobardo are the best known of the authors whose works
appeared during this period, but almost all the China Jesuits were in-
volved.
Yang Tingyun, Li Zhizao, and Xu Guangqi contributed to this public-
ity effort in various ways, writing prefaces and verifying that the Europe-
ans’ compositions had elegant style. Li helped them to spread the news
about the discovery of the Nestorian Christian stele at Xi’an in the 1620s.
By publishing the monument’s inscription in 1625, the Jesuits hoped to
counter their detractors’ aspersions regarding the antiquity of Christianity
and its acceptance in eighth-century China, during the Tang dynasty.68
Other instances of collaboration included Yang’s publication of a descrip-
tive world atlas by Giulio Aleni, Zhifang waiji (Record of Countries Not
Listed in the Record Office, 1623). Most important for the Jesuits’ reli-
gious project, this book contained a lengthy description of Judea and “sev-
eral chapters dealing with points of the holy faith.”69 Further publicity
came from Wang Zheng, whose interest in mechanics spurred him to join
Johann Terrenz Schreck in writing Qiqi tushuo (Illustrations and Explana-
tions of Wonderful Machines, 1627).
The Jesuits also composed texts on Catholic doctrine and devotions to
meet the spiritual needs of their neophytes. Perhaps the most important
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composition from this period was the Tianzhu shengjiao nianjing zongdu
(Collection of Prayers for the Holy Teachings of the Lord of Heaven,
1628), a joint effort of many missionaries edited by Niccolò Longobardo.
This book contained translations of many prayers as well as a number of
spiritual essays adapted from the writings of the Spanish Dominican Luis
de Granada (1504–1588).70 In response to the elder Manuel Dias’s claim
that the Chinese Christians needed a guidebook “to know what and how”
to confess, Giulio Aleni wrote his Dizui zhenggui (Correct Rules for Con-
fession, 1627). Other treatises explained various elements of the faith, in-
cluding the meaning of the mass, the lives of the saints, and the nature of
the soul, matters about which Dias argued that the Christians knew “less
than they should.”71 Texts such as Aleni’s Misa jiyi (Explanation of the
Mass, 1629), Alfonso Vagnone’s Shengren xingshi (Lives of the Saints,
1629), and Francesco Sambiasi’s Lingyan lishao (On the Soul, 1624) helped
to remedy this lack while seeking to instill a desire for the sacraments.
With new printed reference texts available for distribution in the 1620s,
the Jesuits moved to increase and diversify their followers’ spiritual prac-
tices. During this first period of expansion, however, they were most suc-
cessful at stimulating new forms of piety that most readily fit into estab-
lished Chinese cultural categories. For example, the Jesuits encouraged the
formation of charitable groups—a social phenomenon with deep Chinese
roots that easily meshed with the Jesuits’ brand of Catholic lay piety. From
his residence at Jiangzhou in Shanxi Province, Alfonso Vagnone promoted
forms of Christian charity as a complement to his preaching on the corpo-
ral and spiritual works of mercy. Pedro Duan Gun (d. 1641) organized
a group to attend the funerals of his coreligionists. While the Jesuits
claimed that he was moved to do this after hearing of European benevo-
lent societies, such as the Portuguese Misericórdias or the Italian Monti
di Pietà, Duan likely drew his inspiration from Buddhist or Confucian
groups. He had mourning clothes made for twenty poor Christians, who
processed “with lighted candles and rosaries in hand” to the local burial
ground.72 The nature of this group is revealed in its function: since they
had renounced other religious practices, Christians had to invent new
forms of piety that corresponded to Chinese cultural values, such as the
importance of dignified funeral ceremonies.
Another example of the meshing of Chinese social and Christian reli-
gious practices can be seen in the missionaries’ efforts to convert women.
By printing up prayer books or doctrine manuals written in simple lan-
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In the Shadow of Greatness F


guage, they hoped to project Tianzhu jiao into the domestic sphere—an
area that by Chinese custom was off-limits to these foreign men. To this
end, the Jesuits encouraged their female converts to recite prayers dur-
ing their neighborhood work gatherings. Instead of gossiping while they
spun, wove, and folded, reads the 1626 Annual Letter from the Vice-Prov-
ince, the Christian women at Jiangzhou “go singing prayers to alleviate
their labors.” As a result, children also learned doctrine; even “three-and-
a-half-year-old girls,” the Jesuits contended, knew their prayers by heart
“without mistaking a word.” The vehicles for this progress included the
prayer book just mentioned and João da Rocha’s Tianzhu shengjiao qimeng
(Instruction for the Young on the Holy Religion of the Lord of Heaven,
1619), a catechism in dialogue form. According to the Jesuits, the repeti-
tion of the prayers and lessons in these texts was frequent enough to make
“the teachings of the Law of God so well known that even heathen
women know them.”73
Although the Jesuits spread their message with greater vigor than they
had previously, their actions were conditioned by the contemporary polit-
ical climate. As the decaying Ming state made its last attempt to impose
its will on literati factions in the 1620s, the missionaries were forced to re-
strain their apostolic activities. In particular, they had to exercise caution
when gathering Christians for mass or prayer meetings. To suspicious au-
thorities, especially in the Jiangnan region, with its numerous secret socie-
ties and literati factions, such gatherings of foreigners and their followers
might seem like seditious conventicles. That the Jesuits openly combined
literati dress and religious ritual doubtless made them doubly suspect.
Moreover, they had taken the term hui (association), used by literati fac-
tions and sectarian groups alike, to designate their prayer groups. The
1625 crackdown against the Donglin Academy, a large literati faction with
a moralizing political agenda, therefore had the potential of destroying the
mechanisms that powered the Jesuits’ expansion.74 In an attempt to root
out the Donglin faction and other private groups deemed subversive, the
missionaries reported, the Tianqi emperor forbade public gatherings and
prohibited the unauthorized printing of “books on virtue, political or eco-
nomic policy, or, in general, things that are new or strange to his king-
dom.”75
Even if the pace of the Ming state’s collapse soon ran ahead of its re-
pressive capacities, the Jesuits chose to err on the side of caution. Even as
they sought to diversify the devotional habits of their Christians, they re-
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sisted the urge to form large new groups until the specter of official suspi-
cion passed. At Jianchang in Jiangxi Province, for example, when Gaspar
Ferreira founded a group, he called it simply “the Rosebush,” avoiding the
term hui in its name. He also tried to balance the Christians’ desire for ac-
cess to the sacraments with the thorny problem of attracting attention.
Members of the group were required to pray the rosary daily, taking inspi-
ration from the illustrated Song nianzhu guicheng (Method for Reciting
the Rosary, 1619). In the manner of European Catholics who belonged to
Jesuit devotional groups, they were to fast every Saturday and confess
twice monthly. Those deemed worthy were invited to take the Eucharist
once a month. As a defensive move, however, Ferreira instructed the
group’s members to visit his church by threes “so it cannot be perceived
that many are coming.”76
Although the men of the Vice-Province began to claim more converts
in the late 1620s than at any previous time, the small number of mission-
aries, their wide geographic distribution, and their limited financial re-
sources kept baptismal tallies low. To be sure, the Jesuits had only their
powers of persuasion and the symbolic gravity of their public image as au-
thority figures to win new adherents to Tianzhu jiao. Unable to produce
scores of new Christians through coercion—as many of their counterparts
could in areas under colonial dominion—the China Jesuits at best built
their mission church one household at a time. They could not trumpet
the triumphal march of the gospel that was expected by their superiors
and supporters in Catholic Europe, especially in light of so much talk of
mandarin allies and converts. At times the Jesuits’ writings reveal the em-
barrassment they felt at their seeming ineffectiveness. In describing the
newly founded Xi’an residence in Shaanxi Province in the 1628 Annual
Letter, Rodrigo de Figueiredo reported disarmingly on Álvaro Semedo
and Johann Adam Schall: “While we know that they have baptized some
people, it seems it was such a small number that they did not dare to write
any specifics about them for me to pass on.”77
In far-off Rome and nearby Macau, Jesuit officials tabulated the Vice-
Province’s low numbers of converts with increasing concern. Their totals
did little to balance the impression that many outside readers of the mis-
sionaries’ reports came to: that, far from a religious enterprise, the China
mission was an exercise in vanity, in which silk-robed Jesuits abandoned
their vows of poverty and masqueraded as mandarins. The prescribed
remedy for the ills of the young Vice-Province was an inspection. Visitor
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In the Shadow of Greatness F


André Palmeiro (1569–1635), a senior Jesuit with years of experience in
Portugal and India, was sent to handle the task. In December 1628 he fol-
lowed a contingent of Portuguese soldiers heading from Macau to north-
ern China to assist the Ming army in its struggles against the Manchus.
Beyond his intention to give the lie to the damning rumors and to resolve
real internal problems, Palmeiro’s goal was to discover why the Christian
community remained so small “after so many years of work with such ex-
cessive expenditures.”78
After visiting the residences at Nanxiong, Nanchang, Jianchang, Pe-
king, and finally the houses in Jiangnan, Palmeiro arrived at his conclu-
sions about the China enterprise. “The truth,” he wrote to Superior
General Muzio Vitelleschi, “is that there are few Christians, very few con-
sidering the many years during which so many priests have been occupied
with them.” In his estimation, after almost fifty years of missionary work,
the total number of Chinese Christians did not reach six thousand. Yet
Palmeiro was reluctant to blame the lack of adherents to his faith on ei-
ther the priests’ scant diligence or their “flight from trials.” He averred
that “they study, tire themselves, work, and seek occasions for making
many Christians; for all that, they are few.”79
The Jesuits’ limited success, Palmeiro contended, was attributable to
the latent xenophobia of the Chinese, which caused prospective converts
“to be terrified and recoil from any foreigner.” In his opinion, the type of
relationship that the Jesuits had with their mandarin protectors was differ-
ent from the bonds between the Society of Jesus and its patrons in Eu-
rope. In other words, the yawning cultural divide between China and
Catholic Europe impeded the Jesuits from truly becoming part of Chinese
society. Yet Palmeiro’s claim rings hollow. If there had been such a degree
of xenophobia against the Jesuits, they would never have attained the re-
nown they enjoyed by the late 1620s. If they had not been able to over-
come the hurdle of anti-foreign sentiment, they would certainly never
have been granted permission to take part in the official project to reform
the imperial calendar at Peking with Li Zhizao and Xu Guangqi in 1629.
A better explanation for Palmeiro’s conundrum may be that the recent
memory of persecution and official crackdowns, coupled with the Ming
state’s frequent bureaucratic malfunctioning during the first three decades
of the seventeenth century, created a climate of uncertainty about the fu-
ture that led many to be suspicious of the Jesuits. The men of the Vice-
Province would have to wait patiently until certainty returned—a realiza-
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tion about the inevitable collapse of the Ming dynasty and the ineluctable
onslaught of the Manchu invaders—before the mission could expand in
earnest.
At the end of his tour, in the summer of 1629, Visitor Palmeiro sum-
moned the Vice-Province’s consultors to Hangzhou to receive a new set of
rules designed to update the 1621 regulations. These statutes touched on
all aspects of Jesuit life, seeking to chart the course for the mission’s future.
With regard to the low tallies of conversions, Palmeiro offered words
of encouragement. He recognized that “caution and circumspection in
preaching the holy gospel” were essential but insisted that the Jesuits
avoid “excessive fear.” The Visitor also warned against antagonizing the
Society’s detractors or rivals in the religious arena. “Although such is good
and necessary in the preaching of our holy law,” he wrote, “do not at-
tempt to refute the law of the idols [Buddhism] and that of the literati
[Confucianism] with scandalous words.” One should nevertheless not
seek to cover up the uniqueness of the Christian message, Palmeiro main-
tained, by letting the Chinese believe that it is more or less the same as
their native religions and philosophies. Instead, “they should be informed
of their errors with modesty and prudence, so with new awareness they
will give credit more quickly to the truth that we teach.”80
The Visitor’s decision to demand that his subordinates sharpen the di-
viding lines between Christianity and Confucianism was aimed at quell-
ing a dispute that had been brewing among the missionaries for some
time. In the years following the death of Matteo Ricci in 1610, Jesuits
from the Province of Japan began to read through the published writings
of their confreres in China. At the instigation of João Rodrigues, the fore-
most expert on Japanese language and culture among the missionaries, the
Society’s superiors in East Asia opened an inquiry into the Chinese terms
employed to signify Christian concepts. Between 1613 and 1615 Rodrigues
had traveled through China, visiting the mission’s residences and speaking
with literati Christians. These interviews, and other observations he made
of the devotional practices permitted to Chinese Christians by some of his
confreres, led him to the conclusion that the China Jesuits, even if unwill-
ingly, were abetting idolatry.
The crux of Rodrigues’s objections to the way that Ricci and his succes-
sors had promoted Christianity in the Ming empire rested on their use of
dubious doctrinal terminology. The terms that caused the most problems
were Tian (Heaven), Shangdi (Sovereign on High), Tianzhu (Lord of
85
In the Shadow of Greatness F


Heaven), Tianshen (angels), and Linghun (soul). Writing to Superior Gen-
eral Claudio Aquaviva in 1616, Rodrigues made clear his view that his
brethren in China had stumbled into error through their ignorance of the
subtleties of Asian philosophy. He contended that the term employed for
God (in this case Tianzhu) was “a very wicked one” that signified not the
Almighty but rather “a famous deity among the Chinese.” Rodrigues fur-
ther argued that the terms for “soul” and “angel” were “pernicious and
wicked,” and that all of the books that had been printed by the missionar-
ies up to that point should be emended or destroyed.81 The only sure way
to avoid ambiguity was to employ Latin terms with pronunciations trans-
literated into Chinese. This was the course of action that had been adopted
in Japan, where an urge toward purity and orthodoxy led to the introduc-
tion of Latin or Portuguese terms into the Japanese doctrinal vocabulary
in place of potentially ambiguous native terms. As far as their Japanese
converts were concerned, “God” was “Deus,” who was adored under that
name by the baptized everywhere. In similar fashion, the Japanese word
for “soul” was “anima” and the word for “Christian” was “Kirishitan.”82
The Nanjing affair, following hot on the heels of the Jesuits’ expulsion
from Japan, presented the missionaries with an opportunity to discuss the
issue of the controversial Chinese terms in greater depth. Among the four
China Jesuits who were expelled to Macau there were strong differences
of opinion. Ricci’s erstwhile colleagues Sabatino de Ursis and Diego de
Pantoja stood on opposite sides of the issue, and Alfonso Vagnone’s force-
ful defense of the terms contrasted starkly with João Rodrigues’s objec-
tions to them. Under the auspices of Visitor Francisco Vieira and the
members of the Province of Japan at the College of Macau, the missionar-
ies were invited to compose apologetic treatises in 1618. At that time, no
final decision was taken on the issue because of the need to appeal to
Rome for a conclusive judgment and on account of the recent split be-
tween the East Asian missions. In either case, once the substance of these
debates became known to the missionaries at Hangzhou, they began to
take sides on the basis of their appreciation of the Chinese literary canon.
When André Palmeiro reached Macau in 1626 to take up the office of
Visitor, he found the tensions between the China Jesuits running high.
Their disagreements over the disputed terms were not dictated by simple
criteria such as nationality but rather arose from divergent readings of
Chinese texts. The most important matter that divided them concerned the
terms Tian, Shangdi, and Tianzhu, used to signify the Christian God. At
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issue was whether the references to Tian and Shangdi found in the writ-
ings of Chinese antiquity referred to more than the material heaven—and
by extension, whether the Chinese had known of the existence of a creator
God. As a result of the Macau debates over this issue, Superior General
Muzio Vitelleschi wrote to the China Jesuits in August 1625 to prohibit
the term Shangdi. The only priest permitted to reevaluate the controversy
was his newly appointed Visitor.83
In order to repair the rifts between his subordinates, André Palmeiro
gave his blessing to a conference held in 1627 at Jiading. But even this ef-
fort was to no avail. While almost all of the Jesuits agreed that the term
Tian could not signify the Christian God, Shangdi presented more prob-
lems. In the opinion of several of the missionaries who were considered to
be “most well read” in Chinese texts—Alfonso Vagnone, Giulio Aleni,
Diego de Pantoja, Nicolas Trigault, and Rodrigo de Figueiredo—careful
analysis had shown Shangdi to be admissible.84 But the word’s ambigu-
ity, revealed in a series of interviews that Niccolò Longobardo had con-
ducted with literati converts including Yang Tingyun and Li Zhizao (who
showed confusion about the nature of their adopted Supreme Being),
made it unacceptable to other missionaries.85 Longobardo even insisted,
with the backing of João Rodrigues and Brother Pascoal Mendes (1584–
1640), that the term Tianzhu was freighted with idolatrous connotations
and should also be banned.86
The Visitor stepped in to quell the controversy over the terms, but too
late to avoid tragedy. The pitch of disagreement at the Jiading conference
and afterwards had reached an extreme. João Rodrigues went so far as to
upbraid Rodrigo de Figueiredo for his “most ardent” defense of Shangdi—
an outburst that drove Palmeiro to impose a period of fasting on the inter-
preter from Japan. Rodrigues decided to take matters into his own hands
by publishing a new doctrine primer at Canton, using different charac-
ters for Christian concepts.87 On the other side of the dispute, Alfonso
Vagnone contested Palmeiro’s attempts to settle the issue. The Visitor re-
ported to the Superior General in Rome that he felt tempted to recall
Vagnone to Macau for insubordination but had stayed his hand in light of
the mission’s limited manpower.88 As though this internecine strife were
not enough, the dispute claimed one Jesuit’s life. André Palmeiro discov-
ered that the mentally unstable Trigault had committed suicide in 1628 in
a fit of depression over his inability to defend conclusively the use of
Shangdi.89
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In the Shadow of Greatness F


As a result of these events, the Visitor ordered that all discussion cease
and the designation Tianzhu be used to signify God. The words Tian
and Shangdi were to be struck from the Jesuits’ lexicon of Chinese Chris-
tian terms.90 Palmeiro also attempted to stifle any lingering discord
among the missionaries by destroying all copies of Longobardo’s report
and Rodrigues’s doctrine manual, imposing silence on Trigault’s shameful
death, and emending publications that had been marred by dubious ter-
minology. To be sure, the Jesuits could not retrieve all the books they had
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distributed throughout China over the span of three decades. Instead,
Palmeiro encouraged them to embark on a new publication effort in order
to introduce approved texts into the corpus of Chinese writings by Jesuit
authors. To this end, he expanded the Vice-Province’s permissions with
regard to revising and publishing books in China without outside ec-
clesiastical oversight.91 These measures satisfied the China Jesuits, or so
claimed Vice-Provincial Manuel Dias the younger in 1634, five years after
Palmeiro’s visit. Brimming with optimism at the new consensus, Dias de-
clared that the controversy seemed completely resolved and that it would
“never, or only in a long while, be spoken of again.”92
André Palmeiro’s 1629 reaffirmation of the China Jesuits’ work au-
gured well for the mission. During the following two years, six new mis-
sionaries entered the empire, bringing the total number of Jesuits to
twenty-six. Twenty-one of these were European priests; five were Chi-
nese coadjutors.93 The recruits included Étienne Faber (1597–1657), Tran-
quillo Grassetti (1588–1647), Michel Trigault (1602–1667), Pietro Canevari
(1596–1675), and Inácio da Costa (1603–1666). While the deaths of
Johann Terrenz Schreck (1630) and Nicolas Trigault (1628) represented
setbacks, the new arrivals brought fresh funding and provisions that en-
abled the Vice-Province to move forward. By 1631 the mission had eleven
residences spread over eight of the fifteen imperial provinces: Peking,
Jiangzhou
(Shanxi),
Xi’an
(Shaanxi),
Kaifeng
(Henan),
Shanghai
(Jiangnan),
Jiading
(Jiangnan),
Nanjing,
Hangzhou
(Zhejiang),
Nanchang (Jiangxi), Jianchang (Jiangxi), and Fuzhou (Fujian). The Jesu-
its’ tally of conversions also began to rise, with reports of larger groups
asking for baptism. In 1630 Gaspar Ferreira claimed 260 baptisms in
Jianchang alone, while in the Shanghai area Pedro Ribeiro recorded only
14 fewer.94 The following year, the mission claimed a grand total of 1,786
baptisms, an increase of almost a third if Palmeiro’s previous estimate of
6,000 Christians in the whole mission was valid.95
In the early 1630s, after half a century of missionary work, the China en-
terprise of the Society of Jesus finally came of age. Reflecting on the
changes that had occurred since the crises of 1616–17, Álvaro Semedo
noted that the mission’s affairs had begun to proceed in a manner “very
different from times past.” In his opinion, the tumult of earlier years was
the work of the Divine Gardener: “A mature tree is cut back so that it will
spring forth again more vigorously, and more vibrantly.”96 Redoubling
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In the Shadow of Greatness F


their efforts, the missionaries preached boldly and reaped the reward of
more conversions. They strengthened their position at Peking by serv-
ing the throne through their assistance with the calendar reform project
(1629–1635), burnishing their reputation as scholars who could make in-
dispensable contributions to the welfare of the Chinese state.
The confidence and sense of security felt by the Jesuits at court were
shared by their confreres in the provinces, enabling the Vice-Province to
overcome the losses of almost all of the mandarin protectors who had re-
peatedly intervened to safeguard it. In 1627 both Yang Tingyun and Ye
Xianggao died. Three years later Li Zhizao passed away. Caught in an
imbroglio that ended with his condemnation for rebelling against the
throne, Sun Yuanhua was beheaded in 1632. And in the following year Xu
Guangqi died shortly after maneuvering to help the Jesuits get reestab-
lished at Nanjing. All had used their influence at court, in the provinces,
or in printed texts to protect and foster the mission in the preceding three
decades. For the coming decades, the hometowns of these mandarins—
Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Fuzhou—remained the centers of the Jesuit
mission. But while the progeny of these illustrious men formed the cores
of their local churches, the Jesuits would claim very few other high-rank-
ing officials as converts in the future.
In the eyes of a number of modern scholars, the missionaries’ failure to
convert any more Grand Secretaries or other powerful figures was due to
their inadequacy as Matteo Ricci’s successors. They were neither diplo-
matic nor intelligent enough to win the hearts of the literati at the top of
the cultural scale. One mode of argument tries to detect a series of na-
tional fault lines among the Jesuits, reasoning that the Portuguese priests
who assumed control of the Vice-Province after 1623 were hampered by a
“conquistador mentality” that prevented them from entering into mean-
ingful dialogue with later mandarins.97 This charge builds on another, the
claim that the Jesuits had focused all along on converting the elite: “As the
status of the literati converts dropped, the Jesuit effort began to falter.”98
Another line of reasoning about the Jesuits’ incapacity to produce a sig-
nificant number of mandarin converts is rooted in explanations of the cul-
tural climate among late Ming literati. To the scholars who support this
view, the later years of the Wanli reign (roughly from 1590 until 1620) pro-
duced an openness to nontraditional thought systems, such as Tianxue or
the Buddhist-Daoist-Confucian melding known as Sanxue (Three Teach-
ings). During those three decades, disillusioned Chinese scholars were
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E charting the course


more willing to make a “desperate leap” into a foreign religion for the pur-
pose of salvaging some of the fundamental values of Confucian teaching.
Yet by the 1630s, as John Wills has claimed, that moment had passed.99
But if one looks at this phenomenon from a different perspective, it be-
comes apparent that by 1633 the Jesuits no longer needed the protection of
such officials. Their strategy of winning powerful friends had achieved its
purpose of legitimizing them in the eyes of the elite. During the mission’s
first fifty years, their reputation at Peking and throughout the empire had
reached the point where they could dispense with courting individual
mandarins. The Jesuits had concentrated on befriending authority figures
primarily for the protection of their other, socially less important con-
verts, who were at the mercy of potential persecutors. Once the missionar-
ies themselves could guarantee the same protection by virtue of their
standing at court, they focused on the more promising lower-class milieu
in the provinces. Given the many impediments to elite conversions, this
shift made sense. Although the Peking Jesuits would curry favor among
successive emperors and eventually gain official recognition as directors of
the Imperial Astronomical Bureau, they ceased counting on others for
their protection. As the empire gradually descended into chaos and the
Manchu forces loomed on the horizon, the Jesuits changed from protégés
of the Ming elite into individuals capable of standing on their own.
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In the Shadow of Greatness F


3
Witnesses to Armageddon
In the 1630s, clouds of chaos swept across Ming China. In the
words of António de Gouvea (1592–1677), a Portuguese Jesuit stationed at
Hangzhou, God had sent “miseries, hardships, and calamities” to the em-
pire as just punishment for its myriad sins. In the Vice-Province’s Annual
Letter for 1636, Gouvea alerted his readers in Europe to the dangers facing
the mission. Hordes of bandits roamed the countryside, bloated “with the
taste of loot.” In the northern provinces, Manchu horsemen ran rough-
shod, “as if China were their homeland and property.” These raiders
carted off booty from towns and cities, telling the cowering officials “not
to bother coming to look for them, because they would soon be back.”
Rebel armies sprang up across the empire. Hell-bent on exacting revenge
from their mandarin oppressors, they left a swath of destruction behind
them. In the ferocity and inhumanity with which these bands turned on
their own countrymen, wrote Gouvea, they resembled “beasts more than
men.” The Ming forces marshaled to combat these threats were over-
whelmed. In an opinion doubtless shared by other observers, the Jesuit
declared that the mandarins in charge of the military were “better with
brushes for writing than with lances for fighting.” Upon hearing reports
of military defeats, the Chongzhen emperor “turned many times to Heaven,
offering sacrifices and gifts to calm it,” but to no avail.1
In the midst of social unrest and upheaval that swallowed up the Ming
dynasty, new problems and new opportunities were to be found for the
Society of Jesus. During the dynastic transition period, the half-century


from the first Manchu-led military raids inside the Great Wall in the
1620s until the pacification of the empire under the Qing in the 1670s,
nearly every corner of China was touched by war, revolt, famine, and nat-
ural disasters. Paradoxically, the Jesuit enterprise experienced one of its
steadiest periods of expansion while chaos reigned. From the early 1630s
through the late 1650s, the Vice-Province spread into new regions and
claimed ever greater numbers of conversions. It was a critical time for the
Jesuits, who risked life and limb to lay stronger foundations for their mis-
sion church as the Ming state crumbled. In view of the political disinte-
gration, they felt no fear of reprisals from Chinese authorities when they
headed out to preach.
The Jesuits chose to ride out the tempest alongside their converts, and
they suffered with them. As the last embers of conflict died, the mission-
aries tried to reassemble their dispersed communities amid the ruins. Too
insignificant a social force to merit the attention of the Manchu conquer-
ors, the Jesuits were again expanding the ranks of their followers by the
time the new dynasty established control over its vast acquisitions. But in
a changed climate filled with unknown perils, there remained a constant
need: the Jesuits had to gain political legitimacy before the Qing. To
achieve it, they stuck to their old strategy of offering their services at
court. When a handful of Peking Jesuits became confidants of the first
Manchu emperors, they won far greater rewards than they had gained un-
der the Ming. In their shadow, the Vice-Province’s expansion gained mo-
mentum, turning Tianzhu jiao into an identifiable, if minuscule, feature
on the Chinese religious landscape.
Wiring the Mission’s Circuits, 1633–1640
The 1630s witnessed the breakdown of the Ming state. In addition to the
military menace that was amassing on the northern frontier, with increas-
ingly daring raids by the composite army of Manchus, Mongolians, and
Chinese in the service of the new “barbarian” dynasty that from 1636
called itself by the name of Qing, the Chongzhen emperor (r. 1627–1644)
and his bureaucracy were beset with internal problems. The shift to a sil-
ver-based economy in the late sixteenth century had introduced tensions
that, combined with perceived government failures and long-standing
plebeian discontent, exploded in widespread peasant rebellions in the first
decades of the seventeenth. In addition, a series of natural disasters in-
93
Witnesses to Armageddon F


cluding droughts and famines stretched the capacities of the Ming state to
the breaking point. This string of catastrophes snapped the centripetal po-
litical pull of the empire, creating a vacuum of authority in the provinces.
Reacting to the progressive collapse of the Ming body politic, some re-
gional rebel groups metastasized into full-fledged armies with leaders who
went so far as to anoint themselves with new dynastic titles. And the tre-
mendous social upheaval of the years leading up to the Manchu capture of
Peking in 1644 was but the prelude to the brutal conquest and pacification
of the following decades.
Amid the unrest, the Jesuits redoubled their efforts to propagate Chris-
tianity. Their primary focus was on the rural areas that surrounded the ur-
ban centers where they kept residences. The villages around Peking saw
visits by Niccolò Longobardo and Johann Adam Schall between 1636 and
1638, even as the Manchu banner armies drew closer to the city’s walls.
Alfonso Vagnone continued his work in the villages of Shanxi Province.
He left Jiangzhou twice each year, “according to custom,” and in 1639
claimed 388 new baptisms.2 Inácio Lobo (1603–after 1638) was entrusted
with the first missions to islands near the coast of Fujian Province, as well
as in the coastal areas around Fuzhou in Fujian Province. Both Francesco
Sambiasi and Manuel Dias the younger traveled from Nanjing around
the Jiangnan area, visiting the cities where their acquaintances from the
southern court resided. Trips to the outlying villages around Shanghai
produced a wealth of new converts in the 1630s. According to the 1636
Annual Letter, these journeys around the coastal plain gave the missionar-
ies a chance to encounter not only “the greatest number of Christians, but
also the most fervent ones.”3
It was during these rural missions that the Jesuits did the most to im-
prove their previously poor baptismal tallies. While they were clearly
aware of the rewards to be reaped among urban commoners and rustics as
early as the 1590s, they had erred on the side of caution to avoid being la-
beled another heterodox sect that seduced unlettered peasants with dan-
gerous dogmas. But with the mission on a firmer footing and copies of
their religious writings freely circulated among the literati—not to men-
tion the diminished threat of an official crackdown against them—the
Jesuits established mission circuits in rural areas. Periodic trips to the
villages where Christians were found served the dual purpose of deliver-
ing the required yearly sacraments and increasing the numbers of neo-
phytes. By 1637, the circuit centered on Jianchang in Jiangxi Province had
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expanded to the point where Gaspar Ferreira visited “seven cities, and
many villages.”4 In the southern districts of Fujian Province, the efforts of
Giulio Aleni in the Quanzhou area had netted him three different routes
to visit every year.5 In Shanxi Province, Alfonso Vagnone and Étienne
Faber (1597–1657) strung together a mission circuit that attempted to en-
sure regular visits to twenty churches where the Christians from “eight cit-
ies, some towns, and countless villages” gathered to receive the sacra-
ments.6
What was responsible for the Jesuits’ surprising amount of reported
success among Chinese rustics? If these individuals did not engage with
the missionaries on intellectual matters, what attracted them to their reli-
gious teachings? Moreover, if countryside converts had only a tenuous
command of spoken Mandarin—and there is no evidence that the Jesuits
were schooled in the Babylonian diversity of local dialects in the areas
where they preached—what did they know about their adopted faith? To
be sure, even the most thorough search of the Chinese documental record
is not likely to turn up many testimonies by rural Christians in the seven-
teenth century. But the same can be said about their counterparts in early
modern Europe. Yet by parsing the available sources to separate the ele-
ments of actual religious practice from the missionaries’ idealized interpre-
tations of their followers’ piety, it is possible to speculate about what moti-
vated rural converts to embrace Tianzhu jiao.
To rural folk, the Jesuits were powerful masters of ritual. Their manners
and presence evoked awe and respect. Dressed after the fashion of the na-
tive elite, they exuded a recognizable form of gravitas. And like magis-
trates, they spoke the tongue of political power. Their aura surely en-
dowed their foreign religious message with a great degree of symbolic
legitimacy, far more so than if they had trekked from village to village
with begging bowls in hand like the Buddhist clergy. Since the intricacies
of Christian theology were beyond the ken of the rustics—and the mis-
sionaries were skilled enough at rhetoric to best any of them in a debate—
it appears that the Jesuits’ use of religious ritual made them and their mes-
sage attractive. In this respect, they were similar to the native religious
experts who relied on arcane texts or foreign utterances in their deal-
ings with the supernatural. In the fluid religious climate of late imperial
China, where men and women pragmatically drew on a host of devotions
from Buddhist, Daoist, and folk traditions to meet their spiritual needs,
the novel teachings of Tianzhu jiao found willing adherents. It was the
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perceived power of the Jesuits’ rituals, such as exorcisms or the mass,
along with their constant invocations of a supreme Lord of Heaven who
trumped all rival deities that attracted converts in the countryside.
A good example of how the Jesuits deployed ritual in rural settings is
found in a detailed account of Inácio Lobo’s 1637 trip to the coast of
Fujian Province. Traveling alongside a native Christian, the priest landed
on an island where he had no “friends or acquaintances.” The pair headed
to the nearest village, where they encountered a crowd of the curious who
had been alerted by the first frightened farmhands to see them. Lobo cre-
ated a spectacle by marching straight to the town’s clan temple and enter-
ing it without making the customary bows before the revered ancestral
tablets. With his companion most likely acting as an interpreter, he de-
clared that “there was only one God, the creator of all things, and that this
Lord was worthy of being adored.” After talking with the village head-
man, Lobo retired to a house that had been offered him as lodging and set
up an altar. When a group came calling the next day, he ceremoniously
unveiled a painting of Jesus ornamented with a red silk border. According
to his report, the men of the village were so impressed by this Western-
style icon that “they did not take their eyes from it.” With incense and
candles burning, he set the image above the altar and performed the mass.
Lobo continued to say mass each day during his stay on the island. He
even gained credit for bringing much-needed rain, he claimed, when one
mass coincided with a storm—something that did not happen when sacri-
fices were made at the local temples. Twenty-six converts were the reward
for Lobo’s efforts.7
Another attraction of Christianity was that ordinary converts could co-
opt some of the spiritual power of the priests through prayers and devo-
tional objects. Such things were not novelties in late Ming China, since
beads, images, and prayers were all used in the popular practice of Bud-
dhism. Rather, the perception that devotional objects, items with a recog-
nizable value within the Chinese religious system, were endowed with
new meanings infused them with an unusual potency in the eyes of the
people who used them. The centrality of devotional objects to Chinese
popular piety was a fortunate coincidence for the Jesuits, and made it pos-
sible for the missionaries to substitute common European Catholic ob-
jects such as rosaries, nominas, veronicas, and agnus dei pendants for
their indigenous counterparts without much explanation.8 Holy water
and symbolic gestures such as the sign of the cross were also elements of
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the spiritual arsenal that the Jesuits shared with their neophytes. In one
account from the wilds of Shanxi Province, where Alfonso Vagnone went
on mission in the 1630s, the sign of the cross was lauded as an effective
protection against ravenous wolves—except, that is, in the case of two
Christians “who were publicly held to be less than observant of the Ten
Commandments.” This pair saw their two children eaten before their eyes
in spite of their holy gesticulations.9
Well aware of the limits of popular understanding of spiritual matters,
the Jesuits hoped to instill a strong attachment between their converts
and their new faith by insisting on the power of devotional objects and
prayers. But the missionaries’ reliance on symbolic rituals and their insis-
tence on the power of objects meant that they ran the risk of spreading
false notions about themselves and their message. Yet they agreed to pay
this price to attract ever-greater numbers of people to Tianzhu jiao. As a
result, they gained fame in the late 1630s as healers and exorcists. In
Jianchang, Jiangxi Province, for example, Gaspar Ferreira was asked to
visit a nearby village in order to attend to eight sick individuals who had
exhausted their fortune by paying doctors and Buddhist priests to re-
store their health. The Jesuit received this request from a relative of the
afflicted, a literatus who had heard that the Christian God was “all power-
ful” and hoped that the priest would perform a ceremony for them. But
rather than go himself, Ferreira sent a group of Christians. He instructed
them to “console the infirm, give them holy water to drink, put rosary
beads around their necks, and pray.”10
By delegating this task to a set of auxiliaries, Ferreira tried to dispel the
notion that he was like one of the Buddhist or Daoist priests who made a
living enacting rituals. Although he recorded his pleasure at the conver-
sion of the sick men and women after they recovered their health, the mis-
sionary surely knew that he was treading a thin line between promoting
devotions and magic. Yet in a land that held pragmatic views about
the usefulness of religious practices based on their perceived effective-
ness, Ferreira and his colleagues faced a formidable challenge. They were
obliged by the tenets of their faith to focus attention on the spiritual
rather than the material rewards of adopting their religion. To this end,
they insisted on the proper use of devotional objects, stressed the indis-
pensability of prayer, and intoned a continual refrain about the inscruta-
ble judgments of the Lord of Heaven. But doctrine teaching at each stop
on a rural mission circuit over the course of decades was the only sure way
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Witnesses to Armageddon F


of making progress toward the Jesuits’ goal. Eventually, the association be-
tween Christian rituals, devotional objects, and doctrine implanted in the
minds of peasants merged to form a recognizable popular Chinese Chris-
tian identity, an alternative to the literati image of Tianxue.
Challenges Close at Hand, 1637–1640
The mission’s expansion into rural areas and the development of mis-
sion circuits brought new burdens to the Vice-Province as it struggled to
balance limited manpower resources with growing numbers of Chinese
Christians. On the one hand, the Jesuits wanted to strike while the iron
was hot, expanding their communities by converting as many people as
possible. On the other hand, they knew that as the only Catholic priests
in China, they were not there simply to baptize. For every baptism that
did not occur in the shadow of death, the Jesuits looked forward to a life-
long commitment between priest and Christian, one centered on the
yearly observance of confession and communion. This meant that all new
groups of countryside converts had to be incorporated into ever more
time-consuming mission circuits. While aggressive missionaries such as
Alfonso Vagnone were capable of creating communities of almost eight
thousand souls in the course of a decade, it took two or three priests to
minister to them all afterwards.11 And with reported yearly baptismal tal-
lies by the late 1630s reaching the four thousand mark, the mission was
beginning to feel the curious strain of success.12
The political conditions that accompanied the disintegration of the
Ming state, however, created opportunities for expansion that were too
good to pass up. New paths appeared for the Jesuits to expand the Vice-
Province, even if such moves would overstretch their capacities. Since the
Almighty had seen fit to encourage their efforts, they reasoned, He would
surely send the reinforcements for which they ardently prayed. To be sure,
they had not abandoned all caution. In 1635 Francisco Furtado, a Portu-
guese priest from Terceira Island in the Azores, became Vice-Provincial
and brought renewed vigor to the mission’s leadership at a decisive mo-
ment. He directed his men to logical new pastures, areas linked by trans-
portation arteries to the Jesuits’ other residences and locations where local
mandarin allies could be found. These geographic concerns explain why
the mission did not open new stations in the 1630s in the southwestern
provinces of Yunnan, Guangxi, or Guizhou, the northwest beyond Xi’an,
or the northeastern regions of Liaodong or Manchuria.
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Instead, Furtado sent Inácio da Costa in 1637 to Puzhou in Shanxi
Province, a city with a large Christian community that had been part of
Alfonso Vagnone’s mission circuits. There Costa was protected by the
Han family, a prominent clan whose members included Tomé Han Lin
(ca. 1600–1649, juren 1621). The Vice-Provincial sent Niccolò Longobardo
up the Grand Canal to open a residence in Shandong Province. After
two scouting trips in 1637 and 1638, the seventy-three-year-old veteran
missionary settled in Jinan in 1640.13 Furtado also ordered António de
Gouvea up the Yangzi River in 1637 to reestablish the mission in Huguang
Province that had been abandoned years earlier. With the help of the fam-
ily of a mandarin at Peking, Gouvea purchased a house in Wuchang the
following year.14 Perhaps the riskiest venture of all was the expedition of
Lodovico Buglio (1606–1682) in the autumn of 1640 to meet with literati
patrons and open a mission at Chengdu in Sichuan Province.
The missionaries’ enthusiasm, communicated in missive after missive,
had a certain impact on Jesuit superiors outside China. Visitor Manuel
Dias the elder forwarded requests from the Society’s Roman curia for
Furtado to evaluate launching new missions to Tibet, Mongolia, and Ko-
rea. With the exception of Mongolia, these areas had already seen the pas-
sage of Jesuit priests. In the 1620s António de Andrade (1580–1634) made
journeys from India up into the Himalayas, reaching the capital of the Ti-
betan kingdom of Guge at Tsaparang. In the 1590s Gregorio de Cespedes
(ca. 1551–1611) went to Korea in the train of Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s inva-
sion of that country, cheering onward the Christian samurai who played
prominent roles in the assault divisions. But nothing came of this poten-
tial vanguard of a new mission, as the invasion was repulsed and the Jesu-
its’ links to Korea from Japan were severed; to be sure, they converted a
number of Korean slaves in Kyushu. Conceivably, China was a good
springboard into new areas, but Furtado knew his mission could not af-
ford the leap. “Men and silver do not suffice to undertake all this at once,”
he reminded his superiors, countering that the mission should spread first
to all fifteen Chinese provinces.15
The burgeoning numbers of new Catholics weighed heavily on Furtado’s
conscience. He insisted that his subordinates find new ways to maximize
their efforts while ensuring that new converts were not abandoned by
their pastors. Groups such as the men and women of Changshu, a city in
the Jiangnan region, repeatedly asked for a priest to be stationed there.
The leader of that particular community, Tomé Qu Shisi (1590–1651,
jinshi 1616), had given the Jesuits one of his study pavilions to serve as a
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church and residence. But there were only twenty-five European Jesuits
and five Chinese coadjutors in China as of 1639. So the mission was forced
to leave some neophytes adrift “in the midst of such a vast sea of hea-
thens.”16
Furtado also urged his subordinates to rationalize their pastoral meth-
ods. He insisted that a confraternity model of community organization be
employed throughout the mission, building on the urge to form associa-
tions that was such an integral part of Chinese culture. In the Shanghai
area, Christian men and women in villages were grouped into separate
brotherhoods. The missionaries then drew up a calendar for ensuring that
a priest, a brother, or a lay catechist would visit each group at least once
monthly. A similar schedule coordinated each group’s visits to the Jesuits’
residence church for the purpose of assisting at mass. Much of the legwork
for managing these communities was delegated to the more fervent Chris-
tians, many of whom were deputized as catechists. One instance illustrat-
ing how the missionaries coordinated and supervised their activities oc-
curred when Rodrigo de Figueiredo instituted a catechist brotherhood at
Kaifeng in 1640. The members of this Confraternity of St. Thomas gath-
ered twice monthly to discuss doctrine teaching techniques as well as “the
means to further the Christian community and spread the Law of God.”17
For all the Jesuits’ enthusiasm about expansion, their meager financial
resources restrained them. New residences required investment in real es-
tate. When Xu Guangqi, Li Zhizao, and Yang Tingyun were alive, they
gave generously to the mission, donating land, buildings, and money. In
the late 1620s, the mission used this money to decorate its churches and
transform homes into sanctuaries. While the daughters and sons of these
wealthy benefactors continued to give money to their local churches,
these pious legacies could not be stretched infinitely to fund new ventures.
The mission therefore suffered materially when these wealthy Christians
passed on. The Jesuits knew better than to expect their peasant converts
or even their lower-level literati followers to pay for new church buildings.
There were other factors in the Vice-Province’s financial struggles. Be-
yond the costs of maintaining their public image—importing gifts for lo-
cal authorities, keeping their residences in good repair, paying for the
publication of their compositions—the Jesuits had to gain legal rights to
the properties they were given. For instance, when the Chongzhen em-
peror rewarded Johann Adam Schall and Giacomo Rho with real estate
for their work on the imperial calendar in 1635, the Vice-Provincial la-
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mented this stroke of good fortune. Not only was the snail-like pace of
the bureaucracy a vexation, but also, Furtado knew, lots of silver would be
necessary for paying bribes, “without which the king’s ministers do noth-
ing.” After two years, he recorded, the missionaries still had not received
the deeds to these properties, adding that as foreigners, they had no lack
of “jealous rivals” at court who sought to extort money from them at ev-
ery turn.18
Without cash in hand, the Vice-Province needed its troublesome link
to Macau more than ever. Upon the dissolution of the Ming defenses on
the southern coast, it became easier for missionaries to communicate with
the Portuguese colony, but payments from there came with no greater fre-
quency than before. First of all, the mission’s endowments in the Estado
da Índia never produced a continual stream of revenue. The China mis-
sion’s primary external source of income was a yearly payment from the
customs house at Malacca, but the predations of the Dutch East India
Company on Portuguese trade—not to mention the diversion of shipping
traffic to Batavia—meant that this sum rarely reached Macau. When the
Dutch captured Malacca in 1641, the axe finally fell on this income source.
Closer by, the Vice-Province relied on the generosity of the Macanese
merchants, who redirected their pious donations from Japan to China
upon the downfall of the Japan mission. In keeping with the time-hon-
ored tradition of religious orders in Europe, the Jesuits invested in real es-
tate in Macau and inside China. But the banishment of all Portuguese
traders from Japan in 1639 caused this source of funding to dry up as
rental properties in the Portuguese colony became worthless.19 The mis-
sion’s other real estate holdings in China were reduced to ashes in the fury
of the Manchu invasions.
The disasters and unrest of the last years of the Chongzhen reign com-
pounded the Jesuits’ financial woes. The yearly salaries that made it into
the empire were insufficient to keep pace with the skyrocketing costs, and
everyday necessities became scarce. The missionaries—along with the
Chinese population as a whole—were reduced to poverty and, in some
places, starvation. In their misery, China Jesuits turned a jealous eye to-
ward what they considered to be the riches of the Province of Japan. They
bitterly complained about the imagined luxury of the College of Macau,
and how both Provincials and Visitors seemed deaf to their cries. Once
again the China Jesuits sought remedy in a publicity tour of Europe. In
1636 Francisco Furtado sent Álvaro Semedo to visit Portugal, Spain, and
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Rome, but it would be nine long years before he returned to China. By
1641 Furtado was imploring the Superior General for some new form of
support: “I only ask that in your prayers to Our Father, Your Paternity re-
members at the ‘panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie,’ to ask Him
for this for your sons, so that they may work in this vineyard of the
Lord.”20
The 1630s also saw the arrival of another set of problems for the Vice-
Province when the first Franciscans and Dominicans from Manila disem-
barked on the shores of Fujian Province. After many years of preaching to
the Chinese diaspora in the Philippines, the Mendicants were spurred to
start their own enterprise by news of missionary successes across the sea.21
From the perspective of the Society of Jesus, these rivals might destroy the
mission they had worked for so many years to build. The Jesuits resisted
what they considered an unfair intrusion into their territory—even if the
Ming empire was patently far too big for any one order to handle, and de-
spite the fact that it was standard procedure in lands under European co-
lonial rule for different religious orders to work in separate mission dis-
tricts. There was no guarantee, they feared, that the new arrivals would
adopt the Jesuits’ carefully cultivated public image or adhere to their rules
for missionizing.
The Society also read the history of the Mendicant presence in East
Asia as a series of calamities. The Jesuits put the blame for the wrath of
Toyotomi Hideyoshi and the Tokugawa shoguns in Japan squarely on the
shoulders of the imprudent Spanish friars. In previous years, Mendicant
expeditions from Manila had been turned away at Canton and elsewhere.
“They were bursting to enter and do there what they had done in Japan,”
wrote Alfonso Vagnone in 1619, “but the Chinese watch freed us from
these fears.”22 By the 1630s, however, this Argus had lost sight of the far in-
lets of the Fujian coast.
The friction between the China Jesuits and the Mendicant friars was
exacerbated by the national rivalry between the Portuguese and the Span-
ish. Although the Iberian Peninsula had been politically united since 1580
under Philip II and his Habsburg successors, tensions ran high along
the East Asian fault line dividing the Spanish and Portuguese empires.
Within the Society of Jesus, the Vice-Province was part of the Portu-
guese Assistancy, and its principal chain of supply and command passed
through Goa and Lisbon to Rome. To be sure, the Jesuits were not free of
divisions along national lines; for instance, Visitor Francisco Vieira had
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denounced Nicolas Trigault’s journey to Rome in 1613 as part of an Italian
cabal created by Niccolò Longobardo to reduce Portuguese influence.23 By
the 1630s, however, the corporate interest of the Society of Jesus had won
out over the national rivalries of its members. For their part, the Jesuits in
Manila, linked to the Spanish Assistancy through Mexico and Madrid,
had kept out of Chinese affairs since the Sánchez episode in the 1590s.
Their Mendicant compatriots felt no such compunction about respecting
the Jesuits’ internal divisions or about the artificial political and economic
divide between the two Iberian empires. Seemingly, however, they were
not aware that in the short sail from Luzon to Fujian they had slipped
from under the mantle of colonial power into a realm of unfamiliar social
and political forces. Just like the Jesuits, the friars thought, they went in
search of fertile ground for planting the gospel. God would surely reward
them if the crown did not.
Between 1631 and 1634 a handful of Dominicans and Franciscans made
their way to Fuzhou and requested that Giulio Aleni assign them mission
districts in Fujian Province. When Aleni declined, the Dominicans ac-
companied a group of minor literati whom the Jesuit had baptized to
their hometown of Fu’an. In this remote region on the province’s north-
eastern coast, the friars founded a mission that would prove a thorn in the
Vice-Province’s side for decades to come. Even in this far corner of China,
the Jesuits saw their control over the image of Christianity at stake. Their
corporate persona, after all, was virtually synonymous with their religion
in the Chinese mind. The possibility that Chinese authorities might have
reason to question the intentions of all missionaries on account of the ac-
tions of Spanish Mendicants in Fujian was very troubling indeed. When
the first anti-Christian incident in Fu’an involving mandarins and friars
occurred just six years after the Dominicans’ arrival, the Jesuits’ fears were
confirmed.24
If the presence of friars on the Fujian coast gave the Jesuits cause
for concern, their attempts to penetrate further into the empire in the
late 1630s raised cries of alarm. According to Antonio de Santa Maria Ca-
ballero (1602–1669), the first Franciscan to reach Fu’an, Vice-Provincial
Manuel Dias the younger had arranged for him to be kidnapped by a
team of Chinese Christians and Jesuit domestic servants when he headed
inland in 1634.25 Two other Franciscans from Manila did better than their
confrere: They reached Peking in the summer of 1637. There they con-
tacted Johann Adam Schall and Francisco Furtado to ask for help in get-
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ting safe conduct passes and permission to open churches in Fujian. They
also wanted a cash advance. Schall chastised them for their temerity, in-
sisting that their presence had put the whole mission at risk. He informed
a fellow Jesuit that the Franciscans had shown themselves to be “all
swelled up with desires either to be martyrs or to convert the king and
all the Chinese right away.” Schall further noted that neither friar could
speak Chinese, but that both were ready to “jump up on benches with
their crucifixes in hand” to preach the gospel.26
Vice-Provincial Furtado’s first concern was to make the friars disappear
unnoticed from the capital. For this he enlisted the aid of two Christian
mandarins, Li Zhizao’s son and one of Schall’s assistants. The pair went to
the friars’ lodgings in high official dudgeon to inform them that their pe-
titions had been denied and that they had to be escorted back to Fujian
for expulsion to Manila. The ruse worked; the Franciscans did not return
to northern China for over a decade. Furtado also worried that the friars
had discovered the Jesuits’ secret: that the mission was hopelessly under-
staffed for its ambitious apostolic task. If the Mendicants knew how
strapped the Vice-Province was, they would have greater grounds for ap-
pealing to the royal court in Madrid and the Papal Curia in Rome for per-
mission to preach in the Ming empire. More ominously, Furtado heard
the Franciscans ruminating about the chances for success of a Spanish in-
vasion of China from the Philippines. He urged his superiors in Macau to
warn the city’s authorities to petition Philip IV if they wanted to preserve
their settlement, asking the king to stifle such public speculations—“be-
cause we all know the humor of the Castilians when it comes to con-
quests.”27
When these friars returned to Manila, they set in motion a struggle for
spiritual authority over Christianity in China that lasted for over a cen-
tury. Paradoxically, the theological battles known as the Chinese Rites
controversy would have little bearing on the development of the Jesuit
mission within China for the next seventy years. To be sure, this affair
produced such massive quantities of polemic and apologetic in Europe
that scholars can be forgiven for assuming that it cast a shadow over the
China mission from well before the beginning of the eighteenth century.28
But the issue of the Chinese Rites was primarily debated in Manila, Paris,
and Rome. And although it created problems within the Vice-Province at
several later junctures and was debated in China itself by Jesuits, Chinese
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Christians, literati, and even emperors, it did not monopolize the mis-
sionaries’ attentions.
The basic contours of the dispute are as follows. As early as 1635, the
Dominican Juan Baptista de Morales (1597–1654) and the Franciscan Ca-
ballero made inquiries in Fu’an into the meaning of a number of common
Chinese rituals. These missionaries especially objected to seeing Christian
literati participate in Confucian ceremonies and ordinary Christians keep
tablets inscribed with their ancestors’ names in their homes. In the friars’
opinion, both were intolerable manifestations of idolatry and not, as the
Jesuits claimed, merely political and social customs. From Manila they
sent warnings to European ecclesiastical authorities of the Jesuits’ permis-
sive attitude, with the goal of bringing their missionary rivals to heel.
By transporting the issue of the Chinese Rites from Asia to Europe, the
Mendicants delivered a sizable store of ammunition to the Jesuits’ detrac-
tors. One should recall that in 1640, just three years before Morales and
Caballero arrived in Rome, the Society of Jesus celebrated its first centen-
nial, basking in the glow of unrivaled prestige among the Catholic elite of
early modern Europe. But this was the high-water mark of the Jesuits’ dra-
matic rise. Many observers—especially at the Papal Curia and in other re-
ligious orders—considered the Society of Jesus to be dangerously inde-
pendent and potentially subversive to the institutional church. After all,
the decades that had passed since the conclusion of the Council of Trent
in 1564 had seen the gradual uniformization of Catholic practice across
Europe and the curbing of liberties of the church’s diverse component
parts under the Roman standard. Sooner or later the papacy would have
to deal with the Society of Jesus as well. The scandalous reports supplied
by Mendicant informers about the Jesuits’ China enterprise would at
length prove to be an ideal starting point for Rome’s project of subduing
all of its subordinates.
Secular affairs in Europe also played a role in the rites controversy.
Roughly by the end of the Thirty Years’ War, as France assumed its place
at the center of European culture, the order that had spouted from the
twin Iberian springs of mysticism and imperialism found its influence on
the wane—even if the Society’s total membership continued to increase
until the early eighteenth century. Other currents within Catholicism
were also intertwined with political power and social prestige in France,
despite the undeniable importance of the place held by the Society of Je-
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sus in the hearts and minds of the French elite. So the rites controversy
was also a French theological dispute between the ascendant Jansenist rig-
orists and the still formidable Jesuits. And as French power spread to the
Papal Curia, displacing the weight of the Spanish monarchy, the Society
of Jesus saw its claims to be the vanguard of Catholic culture challenged.
This historical development eventually caused the European battles that
ensued over the rites to be brought back to Asia by the fleet of Louis XIV.
Then the Chinese (no less than the missionaries) would be surprised to
learn that the Jesuit face was not the primary reflection to be seen in the
mirror of Catholic Europe.
But though the rites controversy concluded in Europe, it began on the
shores of Fujian Province in the 1630s between rival subjects of Philip IV
of Spain. To the Mendicants who had been trained in Mexico and the
Philippines, where the crown’s agents were ready and willing to impose
belief through coercion, accepting Christianity was a transformative expe-
rience that superseded all cultural concerns. While it would be too much
to brand the friars as completely blinkered Eurocentrics, by and large their
view was that religious matters which raised doubts should be resolved by
theologians, not by neophytes—meaning in this case that the Chinese
Christians should not be allowed to decide for themselves whether or not
they were approaching the rites as civil or religious ceremonies. Those
who had only recently slipped the shackles of paganism through baptism,
the friars reasoned, could not be fully aware of the differences between
idolatry and true religion. For the sake of their own souls, Chinese Chris-
tians must not participate in any seemingly idolatrous ritual.
From the Jesuits’ point of view, the Mendicants had jumped to conclu-
sions based on an imperfect knowledge of Chinese customs. The Portu-
guese superiors who penned the statutes of the Vice-Province agreed with
Matteo Ricci’s contention that Confucianism, the “sect of the literati,”
was a political philosophy that was atheistic at its core. In the manner of
the Humanist scholars, Ricci maintained that Confucian thought was
compatible with Christianity, if only one could get past the Buddhist-
influenced metaphysical coating of the Song period’s Neo-Confucian com-
mentary and read the sage’s original texts. Unlike the friars, the Jesuits
spent years studying Confucian thought before adopting this approach.
Consequently, they had no difficulty in perceiving the yearly participation
of Christian literati in rituals at Confucian temples as a solemn expression
of remembrance for a revered master. To be sure, the Jesuits saw the only
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possibility for promoting Christianity in China in the accommodation of
their religious message to the dominant political orthodoxy. Moreover,
they owed the safety of their mission to the protection of men who were,
by profession, committed Confucians. This is why Francisco Furtado’s
hackles were raised when he learned of friars roaming the streets of Pe-
king, preaching that “the king was wrong and Confucius was in Hell.”29
The Jesuits also saw the second main issue in the rites controversy, the
suggestion that they turned a blind eye to ancestor worship, through the
same prism. They were aware of the high importance of the cult of the
dead in Chinese culture and insisted that Christians needed to approach it
with the correct attitude. In their opinion, the presence of ancestor tablets
in Christian homes was again merely a sign of respect. The Jesuits felt that
they had made it sufficiently clear to their spiritual charges that the souls
of the dead did not reside in these stone markers. It was obvious that the
departed could not come to receive the sacrifices that other Chinese
placed before their ancestral tablets. Here again, the missionaries adapted
the practice of their religion to the local cultural context, giving new
meanings to age-old customs—many with clear counterparts in Catholic
Europe—instead of forcing their converts to divorce themselves from
their society. To be sure, the Jesuits harbored doubts about these ceremo-
nies and published their objections in their Chinese writings. But they
contended that their neophytes would gradually give up these dubious
practices of their own accord. If they viewed the Mendicants’ all-or-noth-
ing approach toward conversion as vinegar, the Jesuits hoped that their
gradualist view on attracting swarms of Christians would prove to be
honey. They felt that their attitude was vindicated by every new Chinese
baptism.
A Preview of the Day of Judgment, 1641–1650
As the Jesuits and the Mendicants fired the opening salvos in a pro-
tracted propaganda war, another engagement reached its climax on the
battlefields of northern China. For men who saw the world through a bib-
lical lens, the collapsing Ming empire that they beheld in the 1640s was
nothing short of Armageddon. For their Chinese peers who saw the natu-
ral disasters and social unrest of the day as signs of impending political
change, it was clear that Heaven had forsaken the reigning dynasty and
was about to usher in a new order. In the Vice-Province’s Annual Letter
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for 1641, João Monteiro (1602–1648) conveyed the epic scale of the de-
struction that overcame China even before the great wave of the foreign
invasion:
Who can describe the calamities and misery that China has suffered
this year without pain in his heart and tears in his eyes? It appears
that heaven, earth, and the other elements have entered the lists
against these heathens so that we can truly say et pugnavit pro eo
Orbis contra insensatos. God has closed the doors to His treasury of
rain and clouds, the seedbeds dry up, the wheat and the rice die, and
weeds do not satisfy the need for rations. An infinite number of peo-
ple evidently go hungry, the airs are corrupted, a plague grows all
over the kingdom, and one cannot count the dead. Such cruel ban-
dits rise up in so great a number, sparing nothing, robbing all, devas-
tating all. Men roam with death before their eyes, dazed and as-
tounded. Some do all they can to preserve their lives; others, tired of
life, hang themselves. Once the rations are eaten, they eat weeds and
tree bark, and finally are reduced to eating human flesh.30
In Monteiro’s judgment, God was sending a very clear message to the
Chongzhen emperor: he must mend his ways and recognize his creator. If
the Ming ruler would accept baptism from the missionaries so close to the
throne, Monteiro contended, “God Our Lord would surely sheath the
sword of His Divine Wrath and extend the arm of His infinite mercy.”31
Yet while the sovereign dallied, the missionaries gave thanks for the op-
portunity to baptize scores of souls in imminent danger of damnation.
In Shaanxi and Shanxi provinces in northwestern China, peasant re-
volts followed hot on the heels of famine and a void of government con-
trol. Yet the Jesuits there informed European readers that they “always
culled good fruit in a time of so many calamities.”32 As the news of im-
pending invasions and roving bands of rebels spread across the empire, the
missionaries used the rising tide of fear to diffuse their message of divine
protection and, failing that, personal salvation. One vignette shows how
the missionaries rejoiced in the widespread reputation of Christianity in
Shanxi Province, where “even the thieves respect it and recognize its
truth.” To prove their point, they told of a baptized merchant who fell in
with bandits as he traveled in the company of non-Christian traders.
When the cutthroats found his rosary beads, they asked what purpose
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they served and learned that the man was a follower of Tianzhu jiao. For
this, the bandits released the Christian but slew his companions. Yet they
took his beads, informing him that if they had “the opportunity to change
their trade and way of life,” they would no doubt become Christians.33
While the mood of anxiety that preceded the dynastic transition was
helpful for the Jesuits’ conversion efforts, the reality of uprisings and mili-
tary campaigns cost the mission dearly. With the empire’s communica-
tion network disrupted, the Vice-Province was forced to split itself in
two so that a superior could always respond to new crises. Francisco
Furtado therefore became Vice-Provincial for northern China and depu-
tized Giulio Aleni in Fujian as Vice-Provincial for southern China. Nei-
ther superior, though, could help Rodrigo de Figueiredo at Kaifeng in
Henan Province in 1642. This Jesuit perished along with his Christian
community when retreating Ming armies cut the dikes along the Yellow
River in a desperate attempt to crush the rebel forces of Li Zicheng (1605–
1645). The ensuing flood that swept across the area resulted in the drown-
ing of three hundred thousand people. In the words of one Jesuit com-
mentator, Kaifeng was razed like ancient Troy, and even two years later no
trace of the city or its surrounding countryside could be seen “except the
water with which it was flooded.” Hoping to save another Jesuit from a
similar fate, Aleni ordered António de Gouvea to abandon Wuchang in
1643. Under the cover of darkness, this missionary fled from the sight of
“dead people in piles” by boat, sailing down the Yangzi River and out of
the reach of rebels and bandits.34
During this turmoil, the Vice-Province focused on preserving its most
vital resources, its priests. Residences like the ones at Kaifeng or Wuchang
could later be recovered, but the mission’s manpower problems were
chronic, and the Society’s enterprise could not bear the loss of too many
trained men like Figueiredo. It does not appear that rebels, bandits, and
Manchus made a special target of the Jesuits, and the Vice-Province es-
caped largely intact. At Xi’an, Inácio da Costa and José de Almeida (1612–
1647) hunkered down in their church while Li Zicheng’s army stormed
the city in 1643. Although about a hundred soldiers entered the sanctuary,
“stealing some things that pleased them,” they did not harm the priests.
Francisco Furtado encountered the same type of trouble during a trip
that he made across northern China in 1642 to deliver salaries to his sub-
ordinates. On two occasions he came across thieves, who stole his chalices
and silver.35
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Some missionaries were not so fortunate. When Gabriel de Magalhães
(1610–1677) traveled to Sichuan in search of Lodovico Buglio in 1642,
both men initially enjoyed the protection of important literati. But when
the warlord Zhang Xianzhong (1601–1647) conquered the province and
proclaimed himself in 1645 ruler of a new polity, Daxi guo, the Great
Western State, he pressed the pair into service as astronomers. They com-
plied and even claimed a few conversions among Zhang’s retainers; but
the ruler’s paranoia and his campaign of wanton destruction in Sichuan
made them fear for their lives. Dragged along under heavy guard in the
warlord’s train as he abandoned the land he had devastated and decamped
for Shaanxi Province, the pair were captured by Manchu soldiers after
Zhang’s defeat in 1647. But a Qing commander who had known Johann
Adam Schall at Peking recognized them and took them along with his vic-
torious army on its return to the court the following year.36 In 1644 Mi-
chael Walta (b. 1606) met his death in Puzhou in Shanxi Province at the
hands of soldiers who mistook him for a scion of the imperial family “hid-
ing under the cloak of religion.” His assassins arrived at this conclusion
because they found him in a church that had once been a mandarin’s pal-
ace.37 Two other priests, Tranquillo Grassetti and José de Almeida, were
killed in 1647 along with a Chinese coadjutor, Manuel Gomes (b. 1608),
during the Manchu capture of Nanchang in Jiangxi Province.
The violence of the dynastic transition could not but take its toll on the
Jesuits’ baptismal tallies. In 1644, the year the Manchu army captured Pe-
king, the Vice-Province recorded 188 new Christians for all six northern
residences, “quite a small number,” in the words of one missionary. Yet this
Jesuit expected as much in the midst of such tumult, when the “blind hea-
thens” had time only “to seek ways to escape death and save their lives,”
not to think about their souls.38 In some areas, however, conversions con-
tinued apace. At Shanghai, Francesco Brancati (1607–1671) claimed 966
new Christians that same year. This tally was impressive, the Jesuits con-
tended, in light of the “many revolts that obliged the priest to refrain from
making trips to the neighboring Christian communities.”39 The mission-
aries at Nanchang also claimed success amid danger. They recorded 220
baptisms in 1643, which they deemed “a great number.” These Jesuits fur-
ther congratulated themselves on creating two new confraternities, which
took the lead in assisting Christians impoverished by drought or affected
by the revolts in nearby Huguang Province.40
The proclamation of a new dynasty at Peking in 1644 did not sig-
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nificantly alter the Jesuits’ strategy for conducting their mission. Once
again, however, they had to establish their legitimacy in the eyes of the
new sovereigns and secure political protection for the mission. To be sure,
it was not until the late 1650s that the Qing emerged victorious in the
long struggle for control over China.41 While the question of sovereignty
was in doubt, the Jesuits proclaimed loyalty to whichever party was in
power. In Peking, Johann Adam Schall was quick to offer his scientific
abilities to the Manchu rulers. His overtures met with approval, and the
new overlords gave him a decree to post on his church prohibiting any at-
tacks on the building or its residents.42 The missionaries took this as a fa-
vorable portent and were pleased to note that the new rulers “leaned more
toward atheism than to any particular cult of false gods.” The start of the
Qing rule at Peking therefore gave them reason to hope for “some notable
good for the faith and the Christian community.”43
To be sure, they did not wager all on the Qing horse. In the uncertain
political climate of the late 1640s, they thought it wise to hedge their
bets by having the Jesuits in South China make overtures to the rump
courts of the Southern Ming. They established relations with both the
Longwu and the Yongli emperors to ensure the survival of the mission in
the (however unlikely) event of a resurrection of the Ming empire.44 Dur-
ing his time in Nanjing, Francesco Sambiasi became a friend of the fa-
vored son of the Wanli emperor, the Prince of Fu, Zhu Changxun, and
the Prince of Tang, Zhu Yujian. When, in the summer of 1645, the succes-
sor to the Prince of Fu, Zhu Yousong, was installed as the Hongguang
emperor (r. 1644–1645) at Nanjing, he appointed Sambiasi as his ambassa-
dor to Macau to petition the Portuguese for military aid.45 Unfortunately
for the Ming, the Jesuit did more for the Europeans than for the Chinese.
With imperial pomp, Sambiasi sailed to Canton, where he negotiated
trade concessions from the local authorities for the destitute colony. His
arrival at Macau aboard imperial ships bedecked with flags bearing Chris-
tian crosses caused quite a stir. According to one eyewitness, many Portu-
guese averred that “either the world would surely end or else be born
anew.”46 In spite of Sambiasi’s empty-handed return to the exiled court in
Fujian, the Prince of Tang, named the Longwu emperor (r. 1645–1646),
gave him a decree praising Christianity and conceded him the right to es-
tablish a church at Canton. As the Jesuit headed off to open his new resi-
dence, Longwu asked his friend where they might meet again. To the
doomed emperor’s delight, Sambiasi replied, “at the court of Nanjing.”47
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Another set of Jesuits fostered relations with the Yongli court, first in
Guangdong and then in Guangxi Province. The story of how Michael
Boym (1612–1659) and Andreas Xavier Koffler (1612–1652) followed the
fleeing courtiers across southwestern China is well known. After baptizing
the Empress Dowager Wang as Helena and the infant heir to the throne as
Constantine, Koffler ordered Boym to travel to Rome in 1651 with a re-
quest for military aid addressed to Pope Innocent X.48 By the time the Pol-
ish Jesuit returned to East Asia in 1659, however, it was too late for anyone
to raise the Ming standard. In a matter of three short years a battalion
of Manchu soldiers would overtake Yongli (r. 1646–1662) in northern
Burma. While the missionaries’ work among the Southern Ming loyal-
ists may have resulted in no more than Pyrrhic apostolic victories, they
did help ensure the survival of Macau and the start of a new mission at
Canton.
By the 1650s the Peking Jesuits had confirmed that the star of the Qing
was in the ascendant, and as good astronomers, they followed its course.
Johann Adam Schall’s initial overtures toward the Manchu sovereigns gar-
nered prestige for the mission. As early as 1645 the Macau Jesuits com-
municated their optimism to the Society’s Roman curia, asserting that
Schall enjoyed greater favor in Peking than Sambiasi did with Longwu in
Fujian.49 Moving to capitalize on the new regime’s need for legitimacy,
Schall presented a version of the calendar that he had helped calculate for
the Chongzhen emperor. This gesture earned him a position as one of the
mandarin supervisors at the Imperial Astronomical Bureau in 1645, with
the title of director and a corresponding salary within the state bureau-
cracy. He also won the friendship of the Shunzhi emperor (r. 1644–1661),
facilitating the political protection necessary for his colleagues to conduct
missionary work in the new Qing domains.
Despite the links of amity forged by Schall at Peking, the men of the
Vice-Province had mixed emotions about the Manchu conquerors. Even
though the might of the invaders had succeeded in pacifying the empire,
they left a tremendous swath of devastation in their wake. In the opinion
of Francisco Furtado, the tragedy he had seen played out before his eyes
seemed like a full dress rehearsal of “the state of the world on the last
day of Judgment after the War of the Elements.” Another missionary
could think of no greater calamities that might occur at the end of time:
“What more vivid image could there be of a finished world but grassless
fields and devastated cities with all their inhabitants gone?”50 António de
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Gouvea contrasted the dynasty’s symbolic name, Qing—in his definition,
“pure kingdom, clear like a sky without clouds”—with the brutality of the
invasion. “Much ado and very little reality” could be sensed in the “names
and pomp signifying the virtues” of the conquerors, he claimed, given
what “one sees with his eyes and feels with his hands.”51 But at least one
Jesuit retained his optimism, averring that “the conquerors only desire to
lord over the land and to take from the rich; they do not seek to offend
the poor”—in this case, the missionaries and their Christians.52
Rebuilding over the Ruins, 1651–1663
As the fires of the Manchu invasion died down and a fearful calm spread
over China, the men of the Vice-Province again renewed their apostolic
endeavors. But after so many years of war and privation, the Jesuits were
older and fewer in number. Only a handful of young missionaries headed
into the ravaged empire from Macau, and there they encountered a corps
of Jesuits who, by early modern standards, were the living dead: of the
twenty-three European priests and four Chinese coadjutors listed in the
1645 personnel catalogue, twelve were over fifty years old. These included
men of venerable age, such as Manuel Dias the younger at seventy-one,
Gaspar Ferreira at seventy-three, and Niccolò Longobardo at eighty-one.
Only six of the China Jesuits were under forty years old, and two of these
would be killed by 1647. Thirty-one-year-old Martino Martini (1614–
1661), a Tyrolean from Trent, was but a babe by comparison.53
To make matters worse, by the early 1650s the mission was in dire
financial straits. Johann Adam Schall’s pension was sufficient only for sup-
porting the Jesuits in northern China. The rest of the Vice-Province still
depended on Macau, a settlement whose sources of revenue had run dry.
Even after it resumed trade with Canton, the colony remained a shadow
of its former self. The protracted wars of the Portuguese Restoration
(1640–1668) meant that Macau, along with the rest of the Estado da
Índia, was left to fend for itself. But while King João IV rallied his troops
against the Castilian army in Europe, the Dutch East India Company
kept up its attacks on Iberian possessions half a world away. The Dutch
presence in Southeast Asia severed the China Jesuits’ links to Goa, depriv-
ing them of rental revenues from their properties in India. In the estimate
of Álvaro Semedo, the man who had managed the mission’s temporal af-
fairs for over a decade, the combination of high prices, scarce goods, and
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no revenues in 1650 made the state of the mission “the most miserable that
it could be.”54 In a move of desperation, Martino Martini was sent to Eu-
rope that same year to secure new funds.
Lacking money, the Vice-Province was sorely restricted in its ability to
reestablish older Christian communities and expand to new areas. Few pa-
trons could be found inside the empire to meet the needs of the mission-
aries, who were left to beg, borrow, or steal. Choosing the second option,
they incurred substantial debts with Chinese lenders in the hope that their
fortunes would soon increase. Simão da Cunha, who had lived in the up-
land districts of Fujian Province for twenty years, put the situation to his
superiors quite plainly: “One makes war on the devil with silver also.” He
lamented having to abandon important activities, such as “printing books,
going on missions, and augmenting the numbers of Christians.”55 A re-
mark made by Feliciano Pacheco (1622–1687), a Portuguese priest who
worked primarily in the Jiangnan region, gives a further indication of the
severity of this crisis. Writing to his European colleagues, he conceded
that the mission’s woes had become so great that the Vice-Province no
longer sought “to acquire and invite new men and workers.” Sustaining
the men in the field became more important than promoting the mis-
sion, since “one can hardly attend to things spiritual while lacking the
temporal.”56
Pacheco’s alarmed claims notwithstanding, the Jesuits reported sub-
stantial missionary activity between 1650 and 1663. In the aftermath of
the Manchu conquest, the number of new Chinese Christians increased
steadily. As long-distance traders in “divine merchandise,” the missionar-
ies benefited from the quelling of banditry and the resumption of com-
merce.57 Their financial lot improved with the resurgence of the Chinese
economy. In the cotton-growing region of coastal Jiangnan, the spread of
Christianity recommenced along with cloth production in the villages
around Shanghai. In 1647, just a year after Qing forces had subjugated the
area, Francesco Brancati claimed 1,162 converts.58 The following year,
the Sicilian reported that his duties included ministering to forty-five con-
fraternities in different towns, twelve of which maintained their own
churches. To be sure, by designating these groups of Christians as confra-
ternities, each with a huizhang, or leader, Brancati (and his colleagues else-
where in China) in effect created a system of parish units. By adopting the
Chinese social impulse of forming common-interest groups, the Jesuits
were able to endow their newly founded Christian communities with a
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strong element of internal cohesion. In the Shanghai area the outcome of
this strategy was readily visible. As early as 1653 Brancati claimed the num-
ber of Christians had multiplied so fast that he was responsible for over
seventy rural brotherhoods.59
The Jesuits in Fujian Province garnered similarly abundant fruit. Build-
ing on the previous efforts of Giulio Aleni and António de Gouvea in the
coastal districts, Simão da Cunha launched new missions in the moun-
tainous interior. There he set up stations at strategic points on the prov-
ince’s river network, at the cities of Yanping, Jianning, Shaowu, and
Dingzhou. Attempting to make the weight of his pastoral burdens under-
stood by his superior, Cunha claimed that he alone had to deal with
enough Christians to keep busy all the Jesuits at “the colleges of Rome,
Coimbra, Évora, Goa, and Macau.” By his own count, he visited twelve
churches, four chapels, and a host of household oratories during his mis-
sion circuits.60
By the 1650s, some of the Vice-Province’s Christian communities were
more than fifty years old. In several cases, three generations had passed
since the first members of a clan had been baptized. The fact that the Je-
suits’ church was no longer made up solely of neophytes brought changes
to the mission, as some of their lifelong Christians began to demand initi-
ation in more complex forms of Catholic expression. The missionaries re-
sponded to this spiritual need by assisting their followers in the intro-
duction of new types of collective piety. Membership in these groups
typically involved the observance of more rigorous devotional schedules.
At Hanzhong in southern Shaanxi Province, for instance, Étienne Faber
founded a penitential confraternity that included fasting, flagellation, and
sexual abstinence among its requirements. A similar group that he formed
in Xi’an met at the local church on Saturday nights to perform flagellation
after saying prayers and hearing an excerpt from saintly exempla.61
The passage of time witnessed the gradual transformation of Tianzhu
jiao from a religion of converts to a faith of families. This change created a
need for qualified individuals to teach doctrine to the children who had
been born into their religion. In Shaanxi Province, Faber attempted to
meet this challenge by starting a “Confraternity of the Angels,” a group
modeled on the doctrine classes held outside the gates of nearly every Je-
suit establishment in Europe. Actually, Faber was borrowing a technique
from Francesco Brancati, who had used such groups to indoctrinate chil-
dren since the 1640s. Similar assemblies were formed elsewhere in China
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by the end of the 1650s in regions such as Jiangnan, Shandong, and inland
Fujian.
As the Jesuits’ communities grew in size, so did the amount of time
each priest needed to allot for celebrating the mass and distributing the
sacraments. This increase in pastoral duties necessarily meant scaling back
proselytizing efforts. But by the 1650s, men and women able to take up
the task of spreading their religious message and catechizing converts
could be found among the mission’s Christians. In order to coordinate the
efforts of his catechists at Changshu in the Jiangnan region, Girolamo
Gravina (1603–1662) founded a “Brotherhood of the Twelve Apostles.”
Members of this group, selected from among the most fervent in the com-
munity, were obliged by the brotherhood’s statutes to attend mass, receive
communion regularly, and confess at least once a month. Their most im-
portant task, however, was to carry out the work of conversion in the mis-
sionary’s stead. They were obliged to “either reinvigorate a cold Christian
or convert some heathen” every month.62
Their advances in the first years of the Qing regime gave the Jesuits the
impression that they had been successfully integrated into Chinese soci-
ety. To be sure, it was crucially important to the mission that some of the
dust kicked up during the invasion should have settled on their churches,
suggesting to the invaders that they had been a part of the landscape for a
long time. While it is unlikely that the Manchus fell for the ruse, the Jesu-
its felt confident enough to relinquish their previous discretion about pro-
claiming their religion. Tangible manifestations of this new attitude could
be found in the fact that in the mid-1650s, their churches went from being
discreet gathering points to clearly marked public buildings, at least in
some cities. Since the priests’ confidence rose quickest at the imperial
court in Peking, so too the new standards of Tianzhu jiao rose first in that
city. In 1655 the Shunzhi emperor granted a residence to Gabriel de
Magalhães and Lodovico Buglio, complete with a gilt sign in his own cal-
ligraphy proclaiming the edifice a gift from the emperor.63 The two Jesuits
commissioned a stone cross flanked by kneeling angels for the gable of its
façade, and claimed that the sight of it compelled “all those who passed
by, even those on horseback or in carriages,” to stop.64 Although the cross
could barely be glimpsed above the high walls of the missionaries’ com-
pound, Magalhães declared it to be the first publicly visible Christian
monument erected by the Vice-Province in China.
Excited by the prestige that the Peking Jesuits had gained for the mis-
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sion, their confreres in the provinces also moved to make their churches
into more visible marks on the urban fabric of the cities where they lived.
For example, the church that Simão da Cunha opened in 1657 in Yanping,
Fujian Province, mirrored the public orientation of the new court edifice.
In contrast to Cunha’s old church with its discreet entrance, this building
was palatial, the former residence of a Christian mandarin who had do-
nated it to the community of his local coreligionists. It sat in the heart of
the city, “in such a manner that when the main door is opened in the day-
time, it is known to all people, Christians and heathens alike.” At the in-
auguration ceremony, on November 1, 1657, Cunha staged a procession to
transfer the sacred images from the old church to the new one. A literatus
led the way, bearing the banner of the Holy Cross, while two pairs of
other literati processed with paintings of a guardian angel and the Blessed
Virgin. The priest marched behind the images, leading a train of Chris-
tians who carried incense and rosary beads. In their wake came a clutch of
non-Christian musicians who had been hired for the occasion, “celebrat-
ing their creator on that day without knowing Him.” What most im-
pressed Cunha, however, was that a Chinese city had witnessed a public
procession which included literati making an unembarrassed profession of
the faith they had “learned from a European man.”65
The public recognition of the place of Tianzhu jiao among the other re-
ligions in some areas of China was accompanied by an increased rivalry
between the Jesuits and the Buddhist and Daoist clergy. Simão da Cunha
bragged to his superiors that he had pulled off his procession in plain
sight of the “bonzes” and their lay sympathizers without fear of reprisals.
There as elsewhere, the Jesuits’ attitude to these rivals shifted from fear to
competitiveness—in addition, of course, to a strong sense of contempt—
as they increasingly saw themselves in a struggle for new adherents. On
this battlefield, rumor was a powerful weapon. During the Chinese New
Year in 1660, Michel Trigault and Albert d’Orville (1621–1662) overheard
gossip in Jiangzhou, Shanxi Province, about the severity of their religion.
At the time of the Lantern Festival, typically celebrated on the fifteenth
day of the first lunar month, they learned of a rumor claiming that “in the
Holy Law, there is no such feasting or happiness.” To quiet their detrac-
tors and reassure their followers, on February 2 the Jesuits instituted the
celebration of Candlemas, the feast of the Purification of the Virgin. They
instructed their Christians to build a platform in the city’s church and
decorated it with silk, candles, incense, flowers, and paper lanterns. On
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the night of the feast they opened the doors of their church to passers-by,
inviting them to see the “lanterns dedicated to the Lord of Heaven and
His most holy Mother.”66
At Jinan in Shandong Province, Jean Valat (ca. 1614–1696) promoted
another festival to stem the tide of rumors about Christian customs. In
the days after Qingming, the springtime grave-sweeping festival, outsiders
remarked that the followers of Tianzhu jiao did not take part in what one
Jesuit termed “bacchanalias that more often end in drunkenness, brawls,
and riots than piety or reverence for the dead.” Within the Chinese cul-
tural context, the obvious conclusion to draw was that Christians had no
respect for their deceased forebears. So in order to display their ob-
servance of the precepts of filial piety, Valat decided to hold a public cele-
bration of All Souls’ Day. This gesture was also intended to encourage
the local Christians to use consecrated cemeteries instead of burying the
dead according to Chinese custom in clan tombs scattered about the
countryside. In 1660 Valat organized a procession to the communal burial
plots “with the solemn pomp of carriages, flutes, and flags.” The priest
led the congregation in responsorial prayers for the dead, conducting
“the rest of the rites and ceremonies required by the Holy Church for
that day.”67
It was only in 1659 that Martino Martini returned from his perilous
round trip to Europe. During the nine years of his absence, the Vice-Prov-
ince had made great strides in promoting its message despite being re-
duced to a skeleton crew. By 1651 there were only eighteen European
priests and three Chinese coadjutors in China, and many of these did not
have long to live.68 It appears that the old guard hung on just long enough
for the first new blood to reach the Vice-Province. The arrival at Macau of
a few new recruits, such as Manuel Jorge (1621–1677) from Coimbra and
Giandomenico Gabiani (1623–1694) from Nice, gave the first signals that
the mission’s fortunes might improve. By 1660, however, many of the vet-
eran missionaries who had built the Vice-Province of China were in their
graves, including Manuel Dias the younger, Simão da Cunha, Francisco
Furtado, Álvaro Semedo, Étienne Faber, and Niccolò Longobardo.
These aged missionaries could have taken greater comfort at the hour
of their death had they known of the success of Martino Martini’s voyage.
From the Norse port of Bergen through Amsterdam, Antwerp, Rome, and
Lisbon, the procurator rekindled European interest in China and gave
fresh impetus for young Jesuits to request assignments to the Vice-Prov-
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ince. His widely translated account of the Manchu invasions, De Bello
Tartarico (Antwerp, 1654), and his descriptive atlas of China, Novus Atlas
Sinensis (Amsterdam, 1655), played no small role in this propaganda effort.
Martini’s passage through the Society’s colleges in the Southern Nether-
lands inspired the vocations of at least three well-known Flemish priests:
Philippe Couplet (1622–1693), François de Rougemont (1624–1676), and
Ferdinand Verbiest (1623–1688). Martini had a similar effect in France,
encouraging the departures of Jacques le Faure (1613–1675), Humbert
Augery (1618–1673), Louis Gobet (1609–1661), and the brothers Claude
(1618–1671), Jacques (1619–1692), and Nicolas Motel (1622–1657).
By sailing from Lisbon to Goa and Macau, these men ran the risk of
being captured by hostile Dutch forces in Maritime Asia. The fact that
Martini himself had been imprisoned briefly at Batavia spurred the leader-
ship of the Society of Jesus to seek an overland route to China. The Aus-
trians Johann Gruber (1623–1680) and Bernhard Diestel (1623–1660) left
Rome in 1656 for the Levant, but were forced to sail from Ormuz to
Macau when the route across Persia was blocked. Gruber trekked back to
Europe from Peking in the company of Albert d’Orville just two years af-
ter arriving at the Qing capital. François de Rougemont and Philippe
Couplet also tried to find an overland route from India to China after
their arrival in Goa in 1656. After two years of travel the Jesuits had only
reached Siam, from whence they sailed to Macau. The road to China, as it
turned out, was paved with good intentions but was too arduous to con-
stitute a reliable alternative to the Cape route.
Martino Martini’s safe return to China was a rousing triumph for the
Vice-Province. In addition to escorting a set of new missionaries, he had
ensured that another group was waiting in the wings for their turn to head
for China. These were the eight priests and one coadjutor whom Martini
had left at Goa to complete their studies. Moreover, while at Rome he
scored what the Jesuits thought was the definitive resolution of the con-
troversies that had been started by the Spanish Mendicants. In the wake of
the papal condemnation of the Chinese Rites as they had been presented
by Friar Juan Baptista Morales in 1645, the Society sought to present its
own interpretation. Martini’s arrival offered a prime opportunity for a
skilled China hand to explain these practices to the ecclesiastical authori-
ties. Convinced by his explanation, Alexander VII issued another decree
in 1656 allowing the rites to be observed by the Jesuits’ Chinese Chris-
tians. The existence of two contradictory papal statements on the rites,
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Witnesses to Armageddon F


[To view this image, refer to  
the print version of this title.] 
 
 
 


Map of Jiangnan
region. Cities and
towns with Jesuit
residences are indi-
cated with a cross
and the monogram
“IHS,” not fully
visible here (see
map on page 122).
From Martino
Martini, Novus At-
las Sinensis (Am-
sterdam, 1655).
[To view this image, refer to  
the print version of this title.] 
 
 
 


however, was one of the main reasons why the controversy continued un-
resolved for at least another eighty years.
The infusion of new manpower enabled the mission to recuperate from
the losses it had sustained during the wars of the dynastic transition.
Using the same criteria for expansion that they had employed in the
1630s, the Jesuits reinforced their positions along major axes of communi-
cation. To consolidate their presence in the Jiangnan region, they opened
residences in cities such as Yangzhou, Changshu, Huai’an, and Songjiang,
places that had previously been visited by itinerant missionaries. From
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Jiangnan, the Vice-Province resumed its work in Henan Province, sending
the Austrian Christian Herdtrich (1625–1684) to Kaifeng to find and build
on the vestiges of Rodrigo de Figueiredo’s efforts.
In an attempt to reestablish a presence in Jiangxi Province after the
destruction of the Nanchang residence and its Christian community,
Jacques le Faure was sent to petition the governor general for permission
to reside there. After meeting with this mandarin in Ganzhou, the seat of
the southern military garrison, Faure chose to settle in that city.69 From
the strategic perspective of the Vice-Province, he had made an excellent
choice. Not only was Ganzhou situated on the main north-south route
from Guangdong to Jiangnan, but it sat at the confluence of rivers leading
east out of Jiangxi into Fujian as well. From here missionaries could
travel south to Canton and Macau and east to Dingzhou, Shaowu, or
Yanping. The mission fully resumed its work in Jiangxi Province in 1661,
when Inácio da Costa opened a house at Nanchang and helped Prospero
Intorcetta (1625–1696) get settled at Jianchang.
Another example of the Jesuits’ efforts to regain lost ground was the re-
opening of their Huguang Province residence. In 1661 Jacques Motel
accompanied Basílio Xu Zuanzeng (1627–1700, jinshi 1649), the great-
grandson of Xu Guangqi, on his journey up the Yangzi to take up a post
in Sichuan. News of uprisings to the west gave Xu reason to tarry at
Wuchang, where he insisted that Motel settle. The French Jesuit pur-
chased a house with a large garden in the center of the city, using funds
that Xu had given him. Motel informed his superiors that his new resi-
dence was situated on the principal street that led from the quayside to
the palaces of the important provincial mandarins. All of the officials who
arrived at Wuchang therefore had to pass in front of his church on their
way to visit the governor, “seeing it, learning about it, and taking news of
it all over the province.” This strategic position, Motel claimed, made this
new sanctuary known to far more Chinese than other churches “that had
been open for many years.”70
By 1663 the men of the Vice-Province were confident about their future
in the Qing empire. Their warm relations with the Peking mandarins
even led Gabriel de Magalhães to exclaim, “Never during the previous dy-
nasty had the mission reached the state in which it is now.”71 Despite the
fact that their ranks comprised only twenty-four European priests and
three Chinese coadjutors, they had nearly doubled their number of mis-
sion stations in the face of tremendous social unrest. Whereas in 1631 they
had just eleven houses, by 1663 they could count twenty residences spread
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Witnesses to Armageddon F


across ten provinces. Moreover, the Vice-Province also had another eleven
churches in different cities, each with living quarters for itinerant priests.
Although it did not have enough men to staff all of the houses, the Jesuits
knew that new recruits would shortly arrive from India and Europe.
In one estimate from 1663 the China Jesuits stated that they adminis-
tered the sacraments to over 105,000 Christians every year. This number
represented close to 100,000 more adherents of Tianzhu jiao than the mis-
sion had claimed at the time of André Palmeiro’s 1629 visit. Logically, the
focal points of the Vice-Province were the areas where the highest concen-
trations of Christians were to be found. These included Peking with three
residences and 13,000 Christians, Shaanxi Province with two residences
and 24,000 Christians, and the Jiangnan region with ten residences and
51,000 Christians. Of all of these residences, the mission station with the
greatest pastoral burden was at Shanghai, where a lone priest and coadju-
tor ministered to more than 40,000 Christians. The only significant loss
of Chinese Christians had occurred in the Yellow River valley in Shanxi
and Henan provinces. In the Jiangzhou-Puzhou area, war, famine, and re-
volt had reduced the number of Christians from almost 8,000 at the time
of Alfonso Vagnone’s death in 1640 to just over 3,300 in the early 1660s,
while Kaifeng’s community appears to have been destroyed entirely.72
After eighty years of missionary work in China, it seemed that the Jesu-
its’ patience and effort had begun to pay off. Clearly the passing of the
Ming order, under which Matteo Ricci and his early colleagues had found
their first interlocutors in China, had not hampered the men of the Vice-
Province from making converts to Christianity.73 They were starting to
fulfill the hopes of their Roman superiors, to the point where Superior
General Goswin Nickel decided in 1658 to attribute the southern regions
of Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan Island to the withered Province of
Japan. This act imposed an administrative boundary on the Jesuit map of
China at the place where the Vice-Province had always encountered prob-
lems. It also reinvigorated the Society’s work at Macau, turning the city’s
Jesuit college into a new hub of missionary activity radiating out across
southern China, Tonkin, Cochin China, Laos, Siam, and Cambodia.
While this gesture removed a set of burdens from the collective shoulders
of the China Jesuits, it did not meaningfully resolve the disparity between
the number of Chinese Christians and the number of missionaries. As it
happens, all the efforts of the men of the Vice-Province had sufficed to
build a massive house of cards that would come tumbling down if a strong
wind blew against it.
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4
The Problem of Success
In the spring of 1664 the China Jesuits went from the heights
of optimism to the depths of despair. Looking back over the series of mis-
fortunes that had befallen them in such a short span, the missionaries
could only express astonishment. The initial years of Qing rule had been
good for them, wrote Manuel Jorge, but this “peace was not peace, it was
a traitorous silence, a feigned calm, a dubious mildness, a sea of milk soon
to be changed into a sea of tears.” Suddenly, the Peking Jesuits were carted
off to prison bound with “nine long and thick chains of iron, all with iron
locks; three around the neck, three on the arms, and three on the feet.” By
early 1665, all of the priests had been summoned to the capital to hear the
sentence brought against them by the Ministry of Rites: Johann Adam
Schall was to be executed and the others were to be exiled to Manchuria.
Before leaving the capital, each priest was to receive forty lashes with a
bamboo cane—“cruel blows, which kill those on the first strike who can-
not hold on to receive the second one.” The ministry further ordered their
churches shuttered and their books and images about the Lord of Heaven
and His teachings consigned to the flames.1
The events known as the Calendar Case and the Canton exile caught
the Jesuits off guard and very nearly ended their missionary enterprise.
Only a stroke of luck in the form of a natural disaster prevented the harsh
verdicts against them from being carried out in full. Instead, the mis-
sionaries were banished to Guangdong Province to await deportation to
Macau. This, too, they were spared; they instead spent seven years in Can-


ton under house arrest. When the political winds at Peking shifted after
the enthronement of the Kangxi emperor, the court Jesuits were restored
to their positions, and their colleagues were permitted to return to their
provincial residences.
The missionaries who fanned out across the empire in the early 1670s
encountered a different set of pastoral tasks than they had known before.
Their primary challenge shifted from proselytizing to managing their
ever-expanding Christian communities. Moreover, they had to find some
way to alleviate the substantial pastoral burdens that had accumulated
during their absence. The Jesuits had three options: to delegate more of
their tasks to native auxiliaries; to ordain a Chinese clergy; or to request
help from other religious orders. Since they believed that their past and
future successes hinged on the efforts of a carefully trained and unified
corps of missionaries, they eventually rejected all three. Yet while the Jesu-
its deliberated, events that would bring them new worries continued to
develop beyond their control. A tide of rivals from Manila, Rome, and
France gathered on Chinese shores; soon it would crash against the Vice-
Province. The new arrivals had come to partake of the apostolic glory that
the Society of Jesus had long touted in Europe. The Jesuits’ claim to sole
proprietorship over Christianity in China was fast coming to an end.
“No Lack of Vexations,” 1664–1670
The crackdown that began in 1664 came as a near-total surprise to the
missionaries tending to their Christian communities outside Peking. This
attack, launched at court by one of Johann Adam Schall’s competitors, hit
the mission at its most vulnerable point. Over the years since the late
1620s, with the integration of the court Jesuits into the imperial bureau-
cracy, they began to take over responsibility for the safety of the mission
from their first mandarin allies. After Schall became director of the Impe-
rial Astronomical Bureau in 1645, the critical task of cultivating goodwill
among the governing elite fell to him personally.
The German Jesuit had carried out his assignment with considerable
aplomb, befriending the Shunzhi emperor and receiving the material dis-
plays of respect befitting any important court mandarin. He was, how-
ever, anything but unaffected by his prestige and by the realization that it
was his skills that made him the linchpin of the Jesuits’ China enterprise.
He had no shortage of detractors even within the ranks of his religious or-
126
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der. Gabriel de Magalhães and Lodovico Buglio, Schall’s companions at
Peking, felt that the lifestyle of a Chinese official was unbecoming to a
member of the Society of Jesus. They criticized Schall’s willingness to
serve a non-Christian emperor in ways that seemed to make him instru-
mental in the propagation of idolatry. After all, what was the purpose of
the imperial calendar? Buglio and Magalhães, as well as other Jesuits,
knew that that Qing state relied on Schall’s astronomical data to draw up
a schedule of lucky and unlucky days for imperial ceremonies.2 Other
missionaries such as Jacques le Faure and Francesco Brancati defended
Schall, noting the tangible benefits that the Vice-Province had received
because of his service at court.3 To their Jesuit superiors, however, the
Vice-Province could not suffer the loss of either Schall’s pension or his
standing at court. They chose instead to stomach the contradiction be-
tween the image of a mandarin and that of a missionary, ad maiorem Dei
gloriam. Nevertheless, they censured his court lifestyle, seeking to stifle ru-
mors about Schall’s flamboyance and arrogance.
If Schall was a controversial figure within the Society, he was even more
so outside it. The central problem, however, was that his entry into Qing
court politics involved the fate of the Vice-Province. As yet another rider
jockeying for position within the new foreign dynasty’s court, Schall inev-
itably left disgruntled rivals behind. Perhaps the most important of these
Chinese detractors were the Muslim astronomers at the Astronomical Bu-
reau whose dismissal Schall had requested and obtained in 1657. These ri-
vals caught up with the mandarin missionary and the rest of the Jesuits
soon after his imperial patron—the Vice-Province’s de facto protector—
died in 1661.
The primary instigator of the Calendar Case was a minor court figure,
Yang Guangxian (1597–1669), an acquaintance of one of the Muslim as-
tronomers sacked at Schall’s instigation. Primed by personal dislike and an
objection to the German’s exclusive control of the official methods of
practicing astronomy, Yang began to spew forth accusations in 1659. He
composed a set of books that attacked Western scientific methods and
mocked aspects of Christianity.4 He then submitted memorials to the
throne, denouncing Schall as a threat to the Qing state. Employing the
register of literati discourse in his writings, Yang cast himself in the role of
a defender of Confucian orthodoxy who sought to restore the proper bal-
ance between Chinese and foreign influences at the imperial court.
It was only after 1661, while the Oboi regents governed in the stead of
127
The Problem of Success F


the future Kangxi emperor (r. 1661–1722), that these attacks began to re-
ceive a favorable reception at the highest levels of imperial power. In an
ironic vindication of Magalhães, Yang offered proof in one of his memori-
als that the bureau run by Schall had calculated an inauspicious day and
place for the burial of an infant from the imperial household, using faulty
science. The Jesuit had thereby brought on the deaths of Shunzhi and his
consort, who expired in the following months. Surely this treasonous act
merited investigation, Yang maintained, since these foreign agents were
likely plotting even greater rebellious acts. By late summer 1664 the re-
gents had delegated the case to the Ministry of Rites, which moved imme-
diately to detain the court Jesuits and seven of their Chinese Christian
assistants from the Astronomical Bureau, including Li Zubai (baptized
1622, d. 1665), a prominent astronomer. As Schall, Buglio, Magalhães,
and their younger colleague Ferdinand Verbiest sat in jail alongside their
native collaborators, news of a major crisis for the Vice-Province left the
capital.5
Unlike the swift flow of communications throughout China, the
wheels of imperial justice turned slowly enough for the Jesuits to escape
severe punishment. Edicts summoning the provincial missionaries to the
capital went out soon after the imprisonment of their colleagues at Peking
on September 15, 1664. When word reached Jiangxi Province, Prospero
Intorcetta, Adrien Grelon (1618–1696), and Pietro Canevari were harassed
by authorities and jailed before being sent on their way. The four Domin-
icans and one Jesuit, Humbert Augery, found in Zhejiang Province were
also imprisoned. But not all of the men in the provinces received the
harsh treatment reserved for those accused of treason. For instance, the
mandarin who expedited Manuel Jorge from Huai’an let the Jesuit decide
the date when he would be carried to Peking—in a sedan chair, though
with an armed escort. Inácio da Costa and António de Gouvea likewise
traveled freely from Fujian Province to the capital, traveling north “with-
out soldiers, without guards, and even without an edict from the manda-
rins.” Similarly, François de Rougemont, Philippe Couplet, Francesco
Brancati, Feliciano Pacheco, and Jacques le Faure were called to Suzhou
before being sent north, but the local mandarins treated them cordially,
letting them stay in the city’s mission station and meet with Christians.6
By the midsummer 1665, twenty-one Jesuits (along with four Dominicans
and a Franciscan) had arrived at court.
In April 1665 the Ministry of Rites issued its sentence against Schall and
his accomplices: the ringleader and his Chinese auxiliaries from the Astro-
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nomical Bureau were to be executed by dismemberment, while the rest of
the foreigners were to be exiled with forty lashes as viaticum. Yet just as
the authorities prepared this pronouncement, Heaven apparently showed
its displeasure in the form of a comet. Then, shortly after the verdict came
out, an earthquake struck the capital, splitting one of the walls of the im-
perial palace. These coincidences led to the issuance of a general pardon,
but it did not extend to those guilty of treason. Li Zubai and four of
Schall’s other Chinese assistants suffered the harshest fate of all the con-
demned; they were beheaded in mid-May.
The amnesty was more valuable to the Europeans, and especially the
court Jesuits. The sentence against Schall was downgraded to house arrest.
Magalhães and Buglio were sent back to their residence, Peking’s Eastern
Church, where Verbiest and later Schall joined them. It remains unclear
why the condemned Jesuits were allowed to stay on at the capital, al-
though Manuel Jorge claimed that Schall and Verbiest were summoned in
chains in 1665 to predict an eclipse for the young Kangxi emperor—
throwing doubt on Yang’s abilities as an astronomer.7 To be sure, Yang did
not see himself as Schall’s replacement; during his first year as court as-
tronomer, he submitted five memorials requesting permission to resign
his post.8 One of the Dominicans called to Peking, Friar Domingo de
Navarrete (1618–1689), suggested that they had been kept at court for
“Chinese reason of state” since they had been pensionaries. As such, they
either were still useful or knew too much about the workings of the Qing
government to be sent away.9 In any case, the main offender, the seventy-
four-year-old Schall, expired within a year of the verdict.
The other missionaries fared somewhat better. To start with, they were
permitted to stay at the Vice-Province’s Peking residences instead of in
jail. In the final verdict of September 12, 1665, their punishment was re-
duced to exile to their native lands via Macau. Clearly seeing the hand of
the Almighty in the mission’s affairs, Jorge described how the earthquake
caused a cross to fall to the ground from the façade of one of the Peking
churches: “Thus Heaven told us that all of the priests would have to go in
procession to Canton bearing the cross.” It was indeed a Via Dolorosa.
The priests sailed slowly down the Grand Canal in the cold Chinese win-
ter, without adequate provisions, in vessels that failed to protect them
from the elements. A little over a month after their arrival in Canton on
March 25, 1666, Inácio da Costa succumbed to an illness provoked by the
rigors of the journey.10
Just as during the Nanjing affair, the verdict of expulsion against the Je-
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The Problem of Success F


suits was not carried out. Once at Canton, they were confined to the resi-
dence owned by the Society of Jesus. But the Guangdong authorities were
not uniformly averse to the missionaries; moreover, they did not stand to
gain great rewards if they diligently carried out the order to expel the mis-
sionaries to Macau. As François de Rougemont recorded, the Europeans
initially encountered “no lack of vexations” from some magistrates. But
the “damnable intents” of these “relics of the persecution,” he noted, were
curbed by the provincial governor, who treated the missionaries kindly.11
According to Domingo de Navarrete, this mandarin stated that he was in
the midst of a dispute with the Portuguese colony and so would take the
prisoners under his personal care.12 The governor’s benevolence included
sending money to the Europeans twice for expanding their cramped quar-
ters—enough to build twenty-two cubicles in a house that originally had
room for just two men.13 Confused about their fate, the missionaries
whiled away their time in study and prayer. “We passed from the life of
the world,” wrote Navarrete, “which was very sad and melancholic, to
that of God, which was good since we had lost our liberty for the sake of
His law.”14
The combination of official favor and bureaucratic inertia eventually
helped undo the strictures placed on the Jesuits and their coreligionists.
Less than two years after they had arrived at Canton, they found them-
selves with considerable liberty to move about the city. They could even
make daylong journeys unimpeded.15 Such freedoms enabled them to re-
turn to the business of cultivating their Chinese Christians as well as
the communities of African and Indian slaves who had escaped from
their Portuguese masters at Macau to Canton. In September 1668, taking
advantage of their relative lack of supervision, the Jesuits secretly sent
Prospero Intorcetta to Europe to report on the state of the Vice-Province
to their Superior General. In order to avoid raising suspicions, the mis-
sionaries replaced the Sicilian under the cover of night with a Frenchman,
Germain Macret (1620–1676), who had been smuggled into the empire
from Macau.
During their confinement, the Peking Jesuits had ample opportunity to
reflect on recent events and plan their return to prestige. Since the Calen-
dar Case had started at court, they hoped that it would end there with a
vindication of their scientific skills. The fact they had stayed on at Peking
meant that there were men ready to return to the Astronomical Bureau
when Yang left the stage. Their opportunity came a few years after Yang
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Title page and first page of pamphlet publicizing the accuracy of Verbiest’s calculation of an eclipse on April 29, 1669,
with legend in Latin, Chinese, and Manchu. Ferdinand Verbiest, Typus Eclipsis Solis anno Christi 1669 (Peking, 1669).
[To view this image, refer to  
the print version of this title.] 
 
 
 


and his Muslim colleagues were entrusted with calculating a new calendar.
By 1668 Ferdinand Verbiest had assumed the role of chief scientist among
the Jesuits at court. He had demonstrated his competence in astronomy
to the future emperor at several reprises, and in 1668 revealed the inaccu-
racy of Yang’s calendar. In his first act of personal rule the following year,
Kangxi dismissed Yang from government service, citing his incompetence
as an astronomer and his false accusations against the deceased Schall.
The Qing sovereign then installed Verbiest as director of the Astronomi-
cal Bureau. This event inaugurated a new period of friendship between
Kangxi and the Peking Jesuits, with the Flemish priest serving as one of
the young emperor’s personal tutors.
In the late 1660s the priests at Canton turned their attention to review-
ing their missionary strategies. Much had changed since the last time a
sizable number of Jesuits had gathered in one place, three decades before.
Most important, the Vice-Province had spread its men throughout the
empire and started Christian communities that had grown significantly.
New methods were required for dealing with the large numbers of Chi-
nese men and women who needed to receive the sacraments every year. It
was also necessary to devise new ways of teaching doctrine and a standard-
ized pastoral practice so that new recruits could take over smoothly when
their colleagues died or were transferred. In addition to their pastoral con-
cerns, the Jesuits confronted the reality that they were no longer the only
European clergy in China. By the late 1640s, a pair of Franciscans had set
up a mission in Shandong Province, and the Dominicans continued their
efforts in the Fu’an area and southern Zhejiang Province. In fact, only
three Dominican friars were present at Canton because five others were
undetected or overlooked by the authorities in Fujian Province.
Hoping to reach an agreement among the three religious orders about a
new general strategy for propagating Christianity in China, the priests
held a conference. Between December 18, 1667, and January 26, 1668,
they discussed such topics as the caution that was necessary when admin-
istering to women those sacraments which required a priest’s touch, the
want of able catechists and of competent doctrine teachers for children,
the phrases to be used when baptizing, and the need to ensure that those
converts who had practiced Buddhist vegetarian fasting abandoned it en-
tirely. Other concerns dealt with the divisions among the missionaries.
One point asked for common assent that no group denounce the others
to the Qing authorities. On the last day of the conference, the assembled
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missionaries gave their unanimous assent that Saint Joseph be proclaimed
the patron saint of China.16
According to Visitor Luís da Gama (1610–1672), the missionaries at
Canton enjoyed a favorable consensus on most of the forty-one points
discussed. The greatest stumbling block, however, was the divergence of
opinions over the Chinese Rites. For their part, the Jesuits insisted that
the 1656 bull secured by Martino Martini in favor of these ceremonies be
observed by all three orders. But the lone Franciscan and the Dominicans
objected. Domingo de Navarrete and Antonio de Santa Maria Caballero
even attempted to persuade da Gama to command his subordinates to
change their minds, presenting him with written explanations of their
views, but to no avail. Nevertheless, the Visitor did express concern that
the Mendicants might still cause the Jesuits trouble over this issue. “I fear
that they will send their treatises to Rome,” da Gama wrote to the Soci-
ety’s Superior General in 1668, “and that the ceremonies for Confu-
cius and the deceased will again be abolished.”17 Little did the Visitor
know that Santa Maria had already dispatched to Rome a partial copy of
Niccolò Longobardo’s banned text from the 1620s about the disputed
terms as evidence against the supposed uniformity of the Society’s posi-
tion, and that Navarrete was soon to leave for Europe to vilify the China
Jesuits in print.18 In light of the rupture over the rites, the consensus on
mundane pastoral matters at Canton was of little value. Soon the divi-
sions between the religious orders would grow as each side took turns pre-
senting its views on this contested issue to ecclesiastical authorities and
the European public in the hopes of receiving another pronouncement in
its own favor.19
The discord revealed at the Canton conference did not stop the men of
the Vice-Province from developing new uniform procedures for their
Christian communities. The variety of Catholic devotions spread across
the Qing empire by priests of different nationalities was one of their cen-
tral challenges. This diffuse spectrum of practices was the natural conse-
quence of the chronology of the mission’s expansion, since the last set of
Vice-Provincial statutes was composed in the early 1630s, just before the
numbers of Chinese Christians began to grow in earnest. During private
consultations, the Canton Jesuits decided to reduce the diversity of devo-
tional confraternities found in their communities to four: one penitential,
one doctrinal, one charitable, and one more broadly devotional. These
groups would use the standard appellations Brotherhood of the Passion,
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The Problem of Success F


Confraternity of the Angels, Brotherhood of Mercy, and Confraternity of
the Blessed Virgin, respectively. Vice-Provincial Feliciano Pacheco issued
other new rules, including a restriction on preaching, which was to be re-
served for priests (not catechists or other Christians), the obligatory use of
the special hat to be worn while saying the mass (priests celebrated the
Eucharist with bare heads in Europe), and a prohibition on permitting
converts to eat in the Society’s residences after being baptized. The Jesuits
also drew up a set of rules to be sent to their Christians, spelling out the
obligations of lay Catholics and the new uniform pastoral practices to be
used in China.20
The Jesuits’ forced seclusion allowed them to reinvest in the intellectual
undertaking that had gained them access to Chinese culture in the first
place. Seeing knowledge of indigenous philosophy as their most formida-
ble weapon in the battle for souls, they set about translating the main
works in the Chinese canon for the benefit of future missionaries. Since
the growing numbers of Christians made it unlikely that new missionaries
would have the luxury of formal study in these texts, they produced their
own editions with romanized text and commentary. It was also an oppor-
tunity to preserve the Society’s acquired insights into Confucian thought.
The Jesuits consequently decided to supplement Prospero Intorcetta’s
1662 translation of the Analects and the Great Learning, titled Sapientia
Sinica, with a larger edition called Sinarum Scientia Politico-Moralis for
the use of missionaries throughout East Asia. The first of this work’s two
volumes was printed at Canton in 1667, while the second appeared in
1670 at Goa, a year after Intorcetta passed through India bound for Eu-
rope.
As their stay in Canton lengthened from months to years, the Jesuits
grew uncertain how their tribulations would end. The news from Peking
was encouraging, but they still needed Ferdinand Verbiest to be promoted
to Johann Adam Schall’s old position. Word reached Canton that the mis-
sionaries’ sanctuaries and residences were intact, in accordance with an
imperial decree requiring “that they not be knocked down but closed and
guarded by the mandarins in each town.”21 Their mandarin acquaintances
at the court insinuated to them that the Oboi regents had resisted destroy-
ing their churches out of fear of harsher reprisals from the young Kangxi
emperor when he assumed the throne.22 Only Peking’s churches appear to
have suffered at all: the Eastern Church was closed, and Yang Guangxian
had taken over Schall’s residence to use it, as one Jesuit wrote, for “parties,
comedies, and other things unfitting a sacred place.”23
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An even more important concern for the missionaries was the spiritual
welfare of their Christians. The lax conditions of their confinement at
Canton permitted them to forward correspondence to the leaders of their
communities, as well as copies of the new rules.24 But from the perspective
of this group of Catholic priests, five years was an intolerably long time
for their flocks to be cut off from the sacraments. There was one priest,
however, who could continue to circulate around China visiting the Jesu-
its’ Christians. This was Gregorio López Luo Wenzao (1617–1691), a Chi-
nese Dominican who had been born in Fujian Province at Fu’an and edu-
cated in Manila. Luo gained the Jesuits’ gratitude for his repeated calls to
their followers in the Jiangnan area. But even a superhuman effort exerted
by one priest was far from sufficient for maintaining the faith of the thou-
sands whom the missionaries had baptized throughout China—not to
mention the children who had been born to Christian parents during
their absence.
In addition to the indispensable service provided by Luo, the Jesuits
counted on their lay auxiliaries for help. It was during the Canton exile
that the catechists and local Christian leaders (huizhang) began to play in-
creasingly important roles within their communities. Because of the grow-
ing numbers of adherents of the Tianzhu jiao and the stagnant numbers
of priests, the Jesuits were forced to delegate an ever greater proportion of
their pastoral responsibilities to auxiliaries such as these. To be sure, it was
because the auxiliaries had performed well at such important tasks as doc-
trine teaching or overseeing the moral and spiritual progress of their peers
that the priests so readily handed over duties which would under other
circumstances have been incumbent on themselves. Reporting to Rome in
1667, Visitor da Gama noted how the huizhang had proved crucial to
maintaining the devotional schedules instituted by the missionaries, espe-
cially in larger communities such as Shanghai. By 1670 the Jesuits could
trumpet to Europe the news that their church had survived the rigors of
the recent persecution: “Throughout the empire, the neophytes live in
peace, fervor, and constancy. They gather in their confraternities with
great modesty. And the industriousness of the local leaders makes the
number of Christians grow daily.”25
So the Canton exile had definitively shifted the responsibility of prose-
lytizing from the foreign Jesuits to the Chinese Christians. In their role as
catechists, these individuals took the initiative to claim converts, baptize
new Christians, and oversee the publication of new editions of texts on
Christian themes. When the Jesuits returned to their residences after re-
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The Problem of Success F


ceiving a pardon in December 1670, they found that their communities
had increased in size during their absence. The change was most evident
in the Jiangnan area. At Changshu, François de Rougemont claimed
that his catechists had been responsible for three hundred new baptisms.
Those at Shanghai had been even more active, with Francesco Brancati re-
cording the addition of almost a thousand new Christians to his flock.26
These were the first signals of a great shift in the nature of the Jesuits’ rela-
tionship to the propagation of Tianzhu jiao. In the relatively short span of
forty years since the mission church had begun to grow in earnest—in-
cluding five years of exile—the Jesuits had been transformed from the pri-
mary propagators of a new religion into the overburdened managers of
far-flung and ever-expanding Christian communities.
Straining at the Seams, 1671–1687
The signs of imperial favor toward Ferdinand Verbiest and the other
court Jesuits that appeared in the late 1660s presaged the end of the Can-
ton exile. In March 1671 the detained priests were permitted to leave
Guangdong Province and return to their mission stations. To the Jesuits,
the imperial proclamation that confirmed Verbiest’s sciences and their lib-
erty was a great triumph, a victory to be celebrated and publicized. But
the document stopped short of either proclaiming tolerance for Christian-
ity or declaring that the missionaries were free to preach their religion. In
fact, it stated that they could practice their religion with the followers they
had already made, but were barred from making new converts. A further
condition prohibited Chinese Christians from holding meetings and from
wearing devotional objects such as agnus dei, nominas, or veronicas.27
While this combination of restrictions and liberty initially left the Jesuits
perplexed about their status vis-à-vis authorities in the provinces (they
were aware that such restrictions were typically placed on religious sects
considered heterodox), they soon learned the benefit of the display of im-
perial favor. With Kangxi himself acting as their patron, no concerted at-
tempt was made to enforce the less favorable clauses of this edict.
The Jesuits suffered from no illusions about how they had gained their
freedom. They knew that the fate of the Vice-Province hinged on the em-
peror’s goodwill in an obvious way. The unease that had arisen among cer-
tain members of the Society of Jesus over their confreres’ scientific service
to a non-Christian ruler dissolved in the face of this new reality. The Jesu-
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its therefore placed even more of their limited resources at the court in or-
der to cement their links to the Qing sovereign. In 1671 Claudio Filippo
Grimaldi (1638–1712), a Piedmontese missionary who had traveled to
Canton to take the place of Domingo de Navarrete when the Dominican
left for Europe, went to Peking to join Buglio, Magalhães, and Verbiest.
Tomé Pereira (1645–1708), a Portuguese priest, was sent to the capital two
years later to entertain the emperor with his musical abilities.
The Peking Jesuits’ overtures toward Kangxi brought them handsome
rewards, helping them overcome the lingering stigma of the recent exile.
Important gestures of imperial favor marked the emperor’s visit to their
residence on July 12, 1675. Accompanied by family members and retainers,
Kangxi first toured the church and afterwards visited the missionaries’
quarters and their garden. According to Gabriel de Magalhães, he ex-
claimed, “Great Harmony! Great Purity!” upon entering the compound’s
sanctuary. There Kangxi read the inscriptions of the Ten Commandments
and the Works of Mercy which hung on the walls. Outside, he was taken
by the way Grimaldi had engineered the perspectives in the gardens,
“truly, a very curious and ingenious layout.” But the greatest indication of
Kangxi’s patronage came when he presented the missionaries with an
honorific inscription. While this gesture was in keeping with the em-
peror’s attitude toward holy men—in the same year he also wielded the
imperial brush for the Fifty-fourth Celestial Master, the Daoist priest
Zhang Jizong—the Jesuits considered it a major display of respect.28 Stand-
ing before the priests in Lodovico Buglio’s room, he wrote Jing Tian, “Re-
vere Heaven.” The following day he sent the missionaries another copy of
his Confucian-inspired motto in large calligraphy for them to hang on the
façade of their church and invited the priests to join him for a horseback
ride through his palatial gardens.29
The Jesuits moved quickly to ensure that potential rivals knew of their
close contacts with the emperor. No sooner was the Jing Tian inscription
displayed at the Peking residence than replicas were made for installation
on their churches throughout the empire. Here was yet another instance
of the predicament in which the Jesuits found themselves when they re-
sumed their positions at the court. It had been over four decades since the
missionaries had abandoned Tian as an acceptable term for the Christian
God, but they could not resist publicizing Kangxi’s favor. Similarly, they
could not refuse his bequest of regal funeral pomp on the occasion of Ga-
briel de Magalhães’s death in 1677. Even if, as a Jesuit, Magalhães was
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bound by a vow of poverty, his confreres had to use the gift of two hun-
dred taels to conduct an elaborate burial. Once again, the Jesuits had been
forced to reconcile the necessity of display with their pastoral obligations,
to the detriment of the latter. Emblems of court ceremonial, including
yellow banners decorated with a portrait of Magalhães and a copy of
Kangxi’s elegy, took pride of place over the dozens of poor Christians who
came to pray for the soul of their priest.30
The Vice-Province’s efforts to win Kangxi’s favor came at a heavy cost.
By placing five men at the court, the Jesuits diluted their capacities in the
provinces and stretched their enterprise almost to the point of rupture in
the 1670s. It was during this decade and the next that the ratio of priests
to Chinese Christians reached its lowest mark. By 1675 the Vice-Province
had at its disposal no more than seventeen European priests and three
Chinese coadjutors to tend to more than 110,000 Christians, only a frac-
tion of whom lived near Peking.
News of the Canton exile caused the Vice-Province’s manpower supply
line to run dry. The recruits left at Goa by Martino Martini in 1657 for the
purpose of completing their schooling had been redirected to other as-
signments when word of the persecution reached India. Worse still, re-
ports of the missionaries’ confinement—regrettably, to their minds, not
martyrdom—that reached Europe helped to shrink the pool of candidates
who considered petitioning for service in China. Despite their release
from Canton in 1671, the men of the Vice-Province were desperately few.
In 1678 they numbered fifteen; in 1680, with the return of procurator
Prospero Intorcetta, their numbers rose to twenty. By 1688 the total was
once again down to seventeen, far too few to staff the vast expanses of the
mission fields they had plowed.31 As a stopgap measure, the Vice-Province
requested men “on loan” from the amply staffed Province of Japan.
How did the chronic lack of priests affect the mission’s development
during the 1670s and 1680s? For one thing, it further distanced the Jesuits
from the project of propagating Christianity through preaching, engaging
in apologetics, or baptizing. Zealous Christians took up the task of prose-
lytizing during the Canton exile, and that trend progressed during this pe-
riod, leading to a general shift in the channels through which Tianzhu jiao
reached new ears. The Jesuits’ existing pastoral burdens rendered the task
of writing new texts for prospective converts an unaffordable luxury—ex-
cept for the Peking Jesuits, whose lifestyle was more conducive to literary
composition. The provincial missionaries exhausted themselves trying to
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keep track of whether their burgeoning numbers of Christians were re-
ceiving a bare minimum of spiritual guidance.32 But by and large the reli-
gious message once disseminated by the Jesuits alone was now spread
through kinship networks and among acquaintances. Rather than travel-
ing along the paths trod by the missionaries or being dilated through
printed matter, Christianity passed from father to son, mother to daugh-
ter, and friend to friend.
Where the missionaries ceded control, the leaders of their Christian
communities took over. By the 1670s these individuals were no longer
neophytes but the descendants of converts. Their most important func-
tion in their communities was the coordination of devotional schedules
in the absence of a priest. The communal spiritual life of the mission
church therefore consisted primarily of prayer routines rather than daily
or weekly masses. Even when a Jesuit was present, the recitation of re-
sponsorial prayers was the most widely used form of lay devotion. To be
sure, by the standards for lay Catholic piety set at the Council of Trent
and promoted by the Society of Jesus, prayer meetings were a sorry substi-
tute for regular reception of the sacraments and close pastoral supervision.
The China Jesuits were well aware of this fact, but they realized that
such lay-run groups were their best means of preserving their commu-
nities while they waited for reinforcements. Yet from the perspective
of less enthusiastic church authorities, such unsupervised manifestations
of lay piety could be construed as a dangerous abdication of priestly re-
sponsibility—a hallmark of the Jesuits’ risky habit of conceding spiritual
responsibility to men and women who were neither trained in theology
nor members of the clerical estate. Whereas in Europe the untiring eye of
secular ecclesiastical oversight could spot the perceived excesses of the So-
ciety’s lay devotees, no such church body existed to monitor the Chinese
Catholics ministered to by the men of the Vice-Province.
According to a description of the Jiangnan-area Christians during the
1670s, in each city a male leader was elected to organize communal
prayers. When the congregants were assembled, this individual would
make the sign of the cross, and then “slowly pray the litanies of the saints
following the usage of the Universal Church.” For the Jesuits, these invo-
cations were particularly useful because they inculcated points of doctrine
and kept the Chinese Christians mindful of the principal mysteries of the
faith with their repeated references to the Trinity, the Virgin, the angels,
and the saints. The litanies were followed by prayers “for the emperor, for
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The Problem of Success F


the magistrates, for peace within the empire, and for the fruits of the
earth.” Further petitions were made for “the emperor of the Holy Law”
(the designation for the pope), the propagation of Christianity, the extir-
pation of heresy, the clergy, the Chinese Christians, and the souls of the
deceased. These ceremonies ended with the recitation of the Paternoster
and the Ave Maria, followed by five kowtows accompanied by short
prayers to the Lord of Heaven and the Virgin.33
Although the identities of most of the lay leadership remain shrouded
in obscurity, a clear image of at least one has survived. This was Candida
Xu (1607–1680), the granddaughter of Paulo Xu Guangqi and mother of
Basílio Xu Zuanzeng. In the biography written by Philippe Couplet,
Candida’s confessor during his ten years of residence in her hometown of
Songjiang and nearby Shanghai, she is presented as the embodiment of
the Jesuits’ ideal of Chinese Christian lay piety. Candida, we are told,
never appeared without rosary beads and other outward signs of her devo-
tion. She always showed due respect for holy water, crosses, agnus dei pen-
dants, blessed palm fronds, and relics. Personally ascetic, she practiced
flagellation in her home, most likely in the company of other female
Christians. According to Couplet, she applied such rigor in her devotions
that he felt obliged to prohibit her austerities “because of the frailty of her
advanced age.”34
In addition to her pious example, Candida also made generous finan-
cial donations to the mission from the 1650s through the 1670s. She
helped spread Tianzhu jiao among women in the Songjiang area by pay-
ing for new editions of Jesuit writings, which she gave to female catechists
to distribute. Couplet referred to her as the “mother of all the confraterni-
ties” in coastal Jiangnan because she purchased rosary beads, sacred im-
ages, and other devotional objects to be given to the local Christians.
Candida also paid for the decoration of the area’s churches, commission-
ing paintings for the main church in Shanghai from “the most famous art-
ists in the cities of Macau and Goa.” And when Couplet went to Europe
as procurator in 1680, she gave him a gold chalice for the Chapel of Saint
Ignatius in the Gesù in Rome, as well as silk embroideries for the tomb
of Saint Francis Xavier at Goa and the Society’s churches in Lisbon,
Mechelen, Paris, and Rome. These were gestures befitting a Catholic no-
blewoman—not surprisingly, the same type of woman to whom Couplet
dedicated his treatise when it was published in Europe.35
Benefactors as munificent as Candida were rare among the Jesuits’
Christians in early Qing China. Community leaders typically had a greater
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abundance of religious zeal than secular wealth, although they were often
of slightly higher social stature than their coreligionists. Yet by sharing
their spiritual riches, they made what the Jesuits considered to be the most
important contribution to their fellow Christians. In the 1670s and 1680s
the Jesuits detected the hand of their community leaders in stimulating a
greater general desire for the sacraments of penance and the Eucharist. To
be sure, this increased demand for access to Catholic rites was in part a re-
sult of the scarcity of priests who could administer them.
This desire for the sacraments was no doubt stimulated by the in-
creased importance of collective piety in the mission church. Membership
in all devotional groups, ranging from penitential brotherhoods to the
“parishes” called Confraternities of the Blessed Virgin, required regular re-
ception of the sacraments. During the middle decades of the seventeenth
century, as these associations assumed a central role in the articulation of
Catholic piety in China, their associated pastoral needs took center stage.
For example, in the late 1640s Martino Martini noted that taking the
Eucharist was “something not normally done, except by older, better-
instructed Christians.”36 By the 1680s, however, reception of the sacra-
ments was far more generalized. For one Jesuit in Jiangxi Province in the
early part of that decade, this general determination and desire to partake
in Catholic rituals, especially at the hour of death, was “a manifest proof
that the faith of the greater part of the Christians was not faked but solid
and true.”37
Such expressions of lay piety on the part of their followers surely
warmed the hearts of the China Jesuits. But each new Christian who
yearned for the Eucharist was yet another pastoral burden bearing down
on the fewer than twenty priests in the whole of the Qing realm (except-
ing the southernmost provinces). By one estimate, the Jesuits’ church
nearly doubled in size in the span of thirty years, from 105,000 in 1663 to
approximately 200,000 in 1695.38 This presented the Vice-Province with a
logistical challenge of tremendous proportions, one that demanded the
maximum rationalization of priestly effort. For example, in the late 1680s
on Chongming Island near Shanghai, Simão Rodrigues (1645–1704) con-
solidated the numerous Christians into groups centered on eight oratory
chapels and two churches. In this way he could make the most of his six-
week stay on the island in 1688, when he baptized 250 Christians and
administered communion to 1,300 in the company of another priest,
François Noël (1651–1729).39
Indoctrination efforts had to be handled in similar fashion. Relying on
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The Problem of Success F


their collective experience as students and schoolmasters before they had
come to the mission field, the Jesuits divided up their flock as they might
have structured classes in one of their order’s European colleges. For ex-
ample, when José Soares (1656–1736) spent three days in a village in
Shanxi Province in 1687, he found that many Christian children did not
know their prayers. He therefore exhorted their parents to gather in the
local chapel “so that as some were being taught, all would learn to-
gether.”40 In coastal Jiangnan, however, such a task was beyond the Jesuits’
individual capacities. In the Songjiang area, Emanuele Laurifice (1646–
1703) appointed eight members of each of his forty confraternities to visit
all of the Christians in their areas every few months.41 Admitting the im-
possibility of going to all of the villages every year, Laurifice assigned these
individuals to teach doctrine, baptize children, console the infirm, and ex-
hort only those who were in extreme need of the sacraments to come to
his residence.
Fathers and Sons, 1672–1690
Over the course of the decades since the Jesuits first complained about
their lack of manpower, a few solutions did emerge. The most obvious
one was to start ordaining a Chinese clergy. Native auxiliaries had assisted
Jesuits from the time Matteo Ricci had secured a presence in the empire,
accompanied by Macanese coadjutors. These indigenous Jesuits had taken
vows as brothers, not scholastics; in other words, they were not destined
to study for the priesthood. The role they accepted upon joining the order
was largely restricted to performing tasks related to the mission’s temporal
affairs. In the aggregate, not many Chinese brothers served the mission
between the 1580s and the 1680s; at any given moment, however, there
were two or three. Surely the priests could supplement their paltry num-
bers with a few good men plucked from the ranks of their zealous cate-
chists, not to speak of their thousands of male followers across the Qing
empire.
The possibility of ordaining Chinese priests was something that the Je-
suits considered at several junctures. The question was first raised in the
1610s in light of the precedent set by the Japan Jesuits in ordaining a
handful of indigenous priests. But although things seemed to be going
well for the mission at that time, missionaries in China did not see their
enterprise developing in the same dramatic fashion as its East Asian coun-
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terpart. When asked by the Society’s superiors in Rome if they needed
permission to accept Chinese members, the China Jesuits replied that the
limited numbers of converts obviated this necessity. Most important for
the mission in the 1610s and 1620s was having sufficient “sons of Macau,”
men of either Chinese or mixed parentage who had been born in the Por-
tuguese colony and schooled by the local Jesuits. While the Vice-Province
depended on their courier service and assistance at various residences, no
sustained push was made to have them ordained as priests.42 The enthusi-
asm originating at the Society’s Roman curia for an indigenous Chinese
clergy was dampened when the Jesuits perceived the hand of native apos-
tates and saboteurs who had served in their ranks in the wreckage of the
Japan mission.43
For decades, the question why the China Jesuits dithered so long about
creating a native clergy has vexed historians. Given the high esteem that
virtually all of the members of the Vice-Province had for China’s culture
and morality, it appears strange that they did not move more swiftly. In
the opinion of one set of scholars, the reason could only be found in the
racist outlook of the mission’s Portuguese superiors—curiously, the same
ones who had carried out the ordination of Japanese priests.44 Other anal-
yses have insisted on a cleavage between the Jesuits at Macau and those at
Peking, with the former being more open to the idea.45 Yet no such abso-
lute divisions among the missionaries along national or situational lines
can be found in extant documents that address the issue.
The most plausible explanation is found in the public image that the
Jesuits had cultivated for themselves. In late Ming and early Qing China,
the terms “Catholic clergy” and Tianzhu jiao were virtual synonyms for
the Jesuits of the Vice-Province and their message. Naturally, whether na-
tive men could join the Society as priests without compromising that im-
age was a central issue. At stake was the order’s exclusive control over the
definition of essential terms within the Chinese cultural context. Would
the strategies that the missionaries had employed to establish their public
reputation and spread their religious message still be viable if Chinese
men joined their ranks? How would their group identity and the potency
of their rituals be affected by the integration of indigenous—that is, less
exotic—members into their ranks? Would familiarity breed contempt?
And what would happen to the reputation of the priests if a Chinese Je-
suit decided to leave the order or disobey his superiors?
The twin issues of identity and obedience became flashpoints for de-
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The Problem of Success F


bate in the 1670s, when the strain of pastoral burdens reached a critical
point. For the men of the Vice-Province, the notion of identity was di-
rectly related to missionary education. Schooling played a crucial role in
the corporate persona of the Society of Jesus. Since all of the China Jesuits
had been educated in the order’s colleges, it was unthinkable that they
could accept men into their ranks who had not undergone such experi-
ences. (The lack of proper training possibilities had first been raised by
Francis Xavier with relation to candidates for the priesthood in India and
repeatedly used by his successors as a reason to avoid creating a native
clergy there.)46 First of all, the years that the European Jesuits had spent in
school had provided them with a common education in classical lan-
guages, Aristotelian philosophy, and scholastic theology. This formational
path gave them the skills, in particular a knowledge of Latin, essential for
church rituals, and a familiarity with “cases of conscience,” indispensable
for assigning the proper penance after hearing confessions. Second, the
Society did not have a complete academic apparatus in East Asia. The
College of Macau expanded during the boom years of the Japan mission
but contracted considerably after its fall.47 There was simply no demand
among the colony’s residents for an institution that taught the sacred and
profane arts, so the Society scheduled classes for its members on an ad hoc
basis. How and where, then, would the missionaries train their Chinese
recruits as Jesuits?
This concern about priestly formation encountered further obstacles
when the matter was considered against Chinese notions of maturity, wis-
dom, and education. As foreigners, the European priests could be implic-
itly understood as learned by virtue of the proven erudition of their peers
who had composed sophisticated tracts. Chinese Jesuits, however, would
first be held to the intellectual standards of their compatriots. In order
to preserve the missionaries’ studied gravitas, their native priests would
therefore have to be mature men with literati pedigrees. But how could
such individuals opt to return to the status of mere boys and subject
themselves to the Society’s standard curriculum? The two educational
paths seemed mutually exclusive since both demanded years of effort. On
the one hand, a Chinese man who completed the two tracks would be too
old to handle the rigors of missionary life by the time of his ordination.
On the other, social conditions in China made it impossible for a young
native priest schooled only in the Jesuit curriculum to assume a position
of authority over his designated flock or within the community where he
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resided. Moreover, his ritual dealings with his Christians might raise sus-
picions about him similar to those associated with other clergy such as
Buddhist or Daoist priests.
Perhaps the greatest educational stumbling block was that, before be-
coming priests, the Chinese men would be obliged to learn Latin. Nicolas
Trigault had pondered this perceived difficulty as early as 1615. While serv-
ing as procurator, he obtained a dispensation from Paul V, who permitted
the celebration of the Eucharist in classical Chinese. He also got approval
for the Jesuits to translate the Bible into that erudite language. But the
Vice-Province never acted on these permissions. By the 1670s, when the
question of a native clergy arose again, the earlier dispensations were un-
der review for revocation in Rome, while in China many of the Jesuits
despaired of the language abilities of the prospective priests. Lodovico
Buglio was convinced that it was impossible for mature Chinese men to
learn Latin, so he set about translating a series of liturgical and sacramen-
tal texts.48 By that time, however, the last vestiges of Roman enthusi-
asm for divergent liturgies, whether in Europe or overseas, had eroded
in the face of the standardizing project of unam sanctam catholicam et
apostolicam ecclesiam. Moreover, suspicions about the Society’s practices in
China had waxed and Jesuit influence at the Papal Curia had waned. The
Sicilian missionary’s texts were therefore left to gather dust.49
Besides education, the other component of the Vice-Province’s image
was its internal cohesion. This was the result of the priests’ shared loyalty
to the Society of Jesus, a bond that had been forged by common experi-
ences and reinforced by individual vows. The Jesuits’ staunch defense of
their order, a key piece of the cultural baggage they had brought with
them from Europe, made it possible for their superiors to insist on disci-
pline and impose punishments on those who strayed from established be-
havioral norms. In China, however, there was no way for native priests to
learn such forms of loyalty and obedience. Most of those who were for the
idea of a native priesthood no less than those who were against it shared
the opinion that future Chinese priests had to be trained in some Euro-
pean or colonial environment.50 In Portugal, Goa, Macau, or Manila,
these seminarians would come to understand such key European concepts
as the distinction between civil and ecclesiastical law. Moreover, they
would acquire the discipline proper to members of a religious order.
Jacques Motel raised this point in the 1670s. He was concerned about
what the mission would do if one of the Chinese priests broke his vows
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The Problem of Success F


[To view this image, refer to  
the print version of this title.] 
 
 
 


and married. Here he contested a claim by Ferdinand Verbiest that the So-
ciety could rely on its internal disciplinary powers: “What power is this, I
ask? By chance, are we in Europe?” Motel insisted that any mandarin
would rule in favor of a renegade Chinese priest, just as the mandarins did
for Buddhist monks who abandoned their monasteries. “In China,” he as-
serted frankly, “all live as they please, entering or changing their religious
profession at will.”51
Discipline not only was necessary for maintaining the cohesion of the
Vice-Province but also was crucial for ensuring that Tianzhu jiao retained
its ritual purity. While the missionaries knew full well that the behavior of
their Christians would never be an exact reproduction of European Ca-
tholicism, they sought to draw some boundaries that would prevent their
flocks from sliding into syncretism. Men such as Jacques Motel objected
to the ordination of Chinese priests because he saw it as a step too far over
the cultural divide—at least until Christianity was legally recognized in
China. Beyond blaming the Chinese in general for inconstancy, greed,
and lust, the French missionary doubted that they could be counted on to
guard Catholic orthodoxy. How could they, Motel maintained, when they
were notorious for “saying and doing what they want, taking off in their
own direction”? Most likely, they would mix in “what they choose from
the sects of the Moors and Bonzes.” Motel cited his own experience as
grounds for his claim, noting that when he first arrived in Wuchang in
1661, he found a literatus who had been baptized long before by Rodrigo
de Figueiredo “passing himself off as a master of the Holy Law.” There
was nothing this man would not do in trying to win over disciples, Motel
wrote, including “telling fortunes, permitting polygamy, saying mass and
offering communion of both wafer and wine, making holy water, baptiz-
ing in a new way, and changing the prayers.” In short, this false priest
tried to ape Figueiredo, “without even knowing how to mimic well.”52
So there were strong disagreements among the Jesuits on this issue.
The cleavage fell between two groups that can be called the Elders and
the Moderns. Although it was not absolute, this divide was the distant
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The Problem of Success F
Title page of the translation of the Roman Missal prepared by Buglio for use in cele-
brating the liturgy in Chinese. From Lodovico Buglio, Missale Romanum . . . Sinicè
redditum (Peking, 1670).


shadow of the great cultural shift that took place in the middle of the sev-
enteenth century as France rose to cultural preeminence in Europe. Docu-
ments from the 1660s reveal a growing discomfort among those mission-
aries from the lands under Habsburg influence (Portugal, Spain, southern
Italy) at what they considered the pretensions of the new French and
Flemish arrivals. The differences between the missionaries became clearer
under the circumstances of forced cohabitation at Canton. The nouvelle
vague, which had begun to arrive in the wake of Martino Martini’s trip to
Europe in the 1650s, saw no insurmountable barriers to the ordination of
an indigenous clergy. Moreover, its representatives felt obliged by the mis-
sion’s weighty pastoral duties to get more priests into the field quickly—
and resented the reluctance of their Portuguese superiors.53
The sense of self-assurance and initiative of the Moderns unnerved the
Elders. Domingo de Navarrete revealed as much in his published in-
trigues against the China Jesuits, in which he claimed that António de
Gouvea had laid the blame for the Calendar Case and ensuing exile on the
“French Fathers.”54 Francesco Brancati confirmed this tension in a 1668
missive to the Superior General of the Society with veiled references to the
excesses of some priests “who had lately entered the mission.” These men,
the Sicilian claimed, did not want to “follow the customs introduced by
the old priests and used for so many years.”55 Jacques Motel seconded this
opinion, asking, “Could it be that these Moderns surpass so many saintly
Elders in their zeal, virtue, prudence, and knowledge of doctrine?”56
With the passage of time, the Moderns gained the upper hand on the
subject of Chinese priests. One of their number, Prospero Intorcetta, laid
the groundwork for this plan during the Canton exile. When this Sicilian
priest traveled to Rome as procurator in 1672, he carried with him sugges-
tions drawn up by the Peking Jesuits (Buglio, Magalhães, and Verbiest)
for the preservation and growth of the mission church. The first proposal
was that Chinese men be ordained after being trained at a seminary some-
where in Asia.57 It is possible that these ideas were discussed at Canton but
that the differences of opinion between the Elders and the Moderns pre-
vented them from reaching a consensus. A strong proponent of the ordi-
nation of a native clergy, Intorcetta made sure that the issue did not die.
While he was in Rome, he acted on his own initiative to secure permission
from Superior General Giovanni Paolo Oliva to open a college in Macau
where the Vice-Province would train Chinese priests. In addition to this,
the procurator received an endowment for the new institution from Pedro
II of Portugal.
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To be sure, the Roman curia of the Society of Jesus did not mandate
the ordination of Chinese priests in 1672. No plan of action accompanied
the funds secured by Intorcetta. Instead, the endowment and the permis-
sion he obtained served as the pretext for a new round of consultations.
The procurator began a campaign to persuade the superiors of the Prov-
ince of Japan to open the new seminary upon his return to Macau in Au-
gust 1674. Both the East Asian Visitors and the Provincials of the Province
of Japan had to agree to the plan since they were responsible for Jesuit af-
fairs in the Portuguese colony. Intorcetta therefore cast his plan in the
most favorable light. He explained that Chinese men, “literati of ripe age
and virtue,” would be brought to Macau for ordination and admission
to the Society of Jesus as spiritual coadjutors. This title was given to
priests in the order who professed the three vows of poverty, chastity, and
obedience. In addition to sharing the pastoral burdens of their European
confreres, these priests would share in the courier duties and language-
teaching functions that had long been the responsibility of the mission’s
coadjutors. His most trenchant argument—the one that had won him
recognition in Rome—was related to the mission’s uncertain future. With
the memory of the Dominican Luo Wenzao’s efforts during the Canton
exile fresh in his mind, Intorcetta argued that the native priests would be
able to minister to the Chinese “in all times of peace and persecution,
conserving the Christian community in perpetuity.”58
In the summer of 1677, three years after Intorcetta’s return from Rome,
deliberations over the ordination of Chinese priests began. Visitor Feliciano
Pacheco sent a circular to all of the China Jesuits ordering them to submit
their opinions on two separate questions: if native priests should be or-
dained and whether the endowed seminary should be located in Macau or
elsewhere in China. Although Pacheco’s personal stance is unclear, the fact
that he dragged his feet for so long before holding this consultation sug-
gests that he was not keen on the idea. What is clear is that by the
late 1670s the majority of the missionaries who sent their responses to
Pacheco’s successor, Sebastião de Almeida, agreed that it was time to begin
accepting Chinese men into their ranks. By that, even Jacques Motel un-
derstood that the Moderns had won; in 1678 he claimed that he was offer-
ing his opinion “in vain, since all, or almost all, of those who were against
this ordination are dead.”59 The only younger respondent who sided with
Motel was Tomé Pereira, a court Jesuit. Although this Portuguese priest’s
response was not as straightforward as that of his French confrere, his
meaning was clear. It would be a good idea to open a seminary with
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The Problem of Success F


Intorcetta’s endowment, Pereira contended, “if there were anybody wor-
thy of living in it.”60
The missionaries who backed the idea took their cue from Vice-Provin-
cial Ferdinand Verbiest. Yet although there was general consent for the
plan, varied opinions were expressed about its specifics. For Verbiest, the
proposed seminary would be best situated somewhere inside China (that
is, not in Macau), and the new priests should be admitted to the Society.
In this way, he claimed, they would be “shackled by their vows” to
obey their European superiors.61 Claudio Filippo Grimaldi and Lodovico
Buglio, the two other court Jesuits, as well as Giandomenico Gabiani,
at that time in Xi’an, all agreed with Verbiest’s ideas. Buglio, however,
added that Chinese seminarians should be literati and should be trained
as priests in Hangzhou.62 The other Jesuits whose responses have sur-
vived insisted that the new seminary would be best situated in Macau.
Simão Rodrigues, Christian Herdtrich, Philippe Couplet, Jean Valat, and
Prospero Intorcetta all felt that the likelihood of future persecutions was
sufficient justification for opening the institution in the Portuguese col-
ony.63 For men such as Valat, Macau was ideal because, unlike Chinese
cities, it was free of “so many bad examples from heathens, or so many oc-
casions for distraction or growing cold in the faith.” Viewing the Portu-
guese outpost through distinctly rose-tinted glasses, Valat concluded that
it was the best place for Chinese priests to “imbibe the ways and customs
of Catholics.”64
Even with the stars aligned in their favor, the dream of the Moderns did
not become a reality until the late 1680s. The Society’s curia in Rome took
years to respond to the outcome of the 1677 consultations. Two events,
though, did help accelerate the pace of the plan’s realization: the consecra-
tion of Luo Wenzao as bishop of Nanjing in 1685 and Prospero Intorcetta’s
assumption of the post of Vice-Provincial in 1687. The continued lack of
priests and a desire to see his old plans come to fruition gave the Sicilian
the impetus to request that Visitor Francesco Saverio Filippucci (1632–
1692) send three of the mission’s coadjutors to the bishop for training as
priests. After spending over a year in Macau completing their novitiate,
Simão Xavier da Cunha Wu Yushan (1632–1718), Bras Verbiest Liu Yunde
(1628–1707), and Paulo Banhes Wan Qiyuan (1631–1700) left for Nanjing
in early 1688. All three had achieved some degree of social prestige: Liu
had been a director of the Astronomical Bureau at Peking, Wu (also
known as Wu Li) was a renowned painter and poet, and Wan held a low-
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level degree.65 During their training they learned how to say the mass and
administer the sacraments by intoning the necessary Church Latin. By the
time these Chinese deacons had taken up residence in Nanjing, the die
had been cast. The local Jesuit superior, Giandomenico Gabiani, insisted
that the Vice-Province could not renege on the ordinations “without pro-
voking a great scandal in the Christian community and even among the
heathens who knew the priests, as well as serious discredit and prejudice
against the Society.”66 As a result, the Vice-Province accepted the three
priests after their ordination on August 1, 1688.
Although some Jesuits received this news warmly, others found the or-
dinations a premature move whose repetition was to be resisted at all
costs. These detractors exercised a strict vigilance over the new priests,
seeking evidence from their behavior to confirm their suspicions. They
were doubtless disappointed by the faultless service that both Wu Yushan
and Liu Yunde gave the Vice-Province. On the basis of their work,
Prospero Intorcetta informed Visitor Filippucci that he had other candi-
dates who could be ordained as priests.67 But the case of Wan Qiyuan pre-
sented problems. In the early autumn of 1689, Wan “disappeared one
night, jumping over the wall” of the Jesuit residence in Shanghai.68 In
February of the following year, he appeared in northern Fujian Province
asking for shelter and pardon from the local Jesuits.69 This curious turn
of events sparked a wave of criticism against Intorcetta. Tomé Pereira
and José Monteiro (1649–1720) wrote of being scandalized by Wan’s in-
discretion and expressed their fears for the Society’s reputation.70 Even
Intorcetta felt chastised, admitting that the affair was “such a disastrous
case that it will urge caution in the future.”71 As a result, the Vice-Province
became so hesitant to accept Chinese priests that it would take over four
decades and another round of harsh persecutions before native Jesuits
formed a significant portion of the missionary group.
The Arrival of Rivals, 1680–1692
While the Jesuits debated the ordination of native priests, the number of
Chinese Christians continued to grow and the Jesuits’ own to stagnate.
This state of affairs forced the superiors of the Vice-Province to turn once
again to the time-honored method of securing new manpower. In 1681
Philippe Couplet sailed from Macau for Europe in the post of procura-
tor. His primary task was to publicize the mission, visiting kings and
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The Problem of Success F


courts to solicit financial donations and passing through Jesuit institu-
tions across the continent to identify new recruits for China. Couplet was
also charged with publishing new tracts that would help in the debates
taking place in Europe over the Chinese Rites.
As propaganda for the mission, Philippe Couplet’s tour was highly suc-
cessful. The procurator skillfully brought the apostolic affairs of the China
Jesuits before the eyes of Europe, amply informing his numerous interloc-
utors about the Vice-Province. Couplet spent nine years on his travels
from the Southern Netherlands through France and Italy and on to Spain
and Portugal, and he was received by Louis XIV at Versailles and Innocent
XI in Rome. He took news of the China mission beyond the usual paths
trodden by its procurators, visiting the Northern Netherlands as well as
the court of James II in England. Couplet’s tour was part theater, since his
train included a Chinese assistant, Miguel Shen Fuzong (ca. 1658–1691),
and an array of Asian curiosities.72 Where he made his greatest impression,
however, was in the Republic of Letters. There Couplet introduced his
learned peers to a pair of his Chinese acquaintances, Candida Xu and
Confucius, the former figuring in his diminutive biography and the latter
in the weighty tome containing the first translations of the Chinese clas-
sics printed in Europe, Confucius Sinarum Philosophus (Paris, 1687). But
unfortunately for the men of the Vice-Province, Couplet’s books and dis-
plays did little to strengthen their position. Instead of provoking wide-
spread appreciation for their efforts, his tour cemented the resolve of the
Jesuits’ rivals to claim all or part of China for themselves.
A new surge of European interest in China started to develop in earnest
in the 1680s, the years of Couplet’s tour. It had been building for roughly
a century but began to affect the men of the Vice-Province only as the cul-
tural panorama shifted in Europe. In many respects, however, it was the
Jesuits who had been stirring the waters with their triumphalist texts for
decades in the hope of attracting the gaze of outsiders to their efforts and
support for their enterprise. With so many splendid visions of Cathay
spewing from European presses in the seventeenth century, the real mar-
vel was that it took the Society’s rivals so long to start paying attention.
Once others fell under the spell of the siren song that the Jesuits had com-
posed, it was only a matter of time before they themselves washed up on
China’s shores.
One way to gauge the impact of the Jesuits’ propaganda efforts is to
imagine an empty European bookcase from 1590 and watch it fill up with
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books large and small over the course of the following hundred years. The
first works on the Jesuits in China would be the printed Annual Let-
ters from the East Indies, which contained sections on Macau and the
Guangdong Province residences. These small books would be dwarfed by
Nicolas Trigault’s account of the heroic deeds of Matteo Ricci and his col-
leagues, De Christiana Expeditione apud Sinas (Augsburg, 1615). Seven
other editions of this work appeared in just over a decade in translations
into French, German, Spanish, Italian, and English.73 Next on the shelf,
after another handful of shorter excerpts from Jesuit correspondence,
would be Álvaro Semedo’s account of the mission and the Nanjing affair
titled Imperio de la China, i Cultura Evangelica en él por los Religios de la
Compañia de Iesus (Madrid, 1642). This work made a far bigger splash in
its subsequent Italian, French, and English translations.74
By the middle of the seventeenth century, the pace of publication of Je-
suit texts on China quickened. Where Trigault and Semedo each pub-
lished one account, Martini left four treatises on different aspects of the
new Qing empire and the spread of Christianity there. His tale of the
Manchu invasions, De Bello Tartarico (Antwerp, 1654), was translated
from Latin into French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian. For
more erudite readers, Martini wrote an account of the Chinese ruling dy-
nasties, Sinicae Historiae (Munich, 1658), and a descriptive atlas, Novus At-
las Sinensis (Amsterdam, 1655). In order to correct earlier impressions of
China as infertile soil for the gospel, he presented an exaggerated bal-
ance sheet of the Vice-Province’s triumphs, Brevis Relatio de Numero et
Qualitate Christianorum apud Sinas (Rome, 1654).75 These works supplied
the raw material for other Jesuits to produce new tomes for the already
burdened bookcase. After digesting numerous manuscript and print ac-
counts in the Society’s Roman archives, Danielo Bartoli compiled a mas-
sive chronology of the mission, Dell’Historia della Compagnia de Giesu:
La Cina, Terza Parte dell’Asia (Rome, 1663). The polymath Athanasius
Kircher continued this effort by turning the celebration of his confreres’
knowledge of the Qing empire into pictorial art with his China Illustrata
(Amsterdam, 1667).
The tumultuous events of the 1660s gave the men of the Vice-Province
plenty of reasons to add still more texts to the creaking stacks of European
libraries. Rumors of their comportment, spread by Mendicant rivals, and
actual attacks on the mission, launched by the Qing authorities, de-
manded that entire batteries of new apologias be rolled out lest the Soci-
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The Problem of Success F


ety’s supporters lose faith in its endeavors. Johann Adam Schall wrote
a history of the mission, titled Historica Narratio de Initio et Progressu
Missionis Societatis Jesu apud Chinenses (Vienna, 1665), which included a
defense of his use of astronomy for the cause of religious orthodoxy.76
Other texts, such as François de Rougemont’s Relaçam do Estado Politico e
Espiritual do Imperio da China (Lisbon, 1672; Leuven, 1673) and Adrien
Grelon’s two-volume Histoire de la Chine sous la Domination des Tartares
(Paris, 1671–72), recounted events prior to the Canton exile. To reas-
sure the reading public, one that no doubt despaired of the mission’s
prospects, Prospero Intorcetta wrote his Compendiosa Narratione dello
Stato della Missione Cinesi dall’anno 1581 fin all’anno 1669 (Rome, 1672).77
Giandomenico Gabiani’s Incrementa Sinicae Ecclesiae Tartaris Oppugnatae
(Vienna, 1673) also gave a positive evaluation of the Vice-Province, while
Ferdinand Verbiest’s Astronomia Europea (Peking, 1678; Dillingen, 1687)
explained how the science he employed at the Qing capital helped safe-
guard the mission. By the time Gabriel de Magalhães’s Nouvelle Relation
de la Chine (Paris, 1690) came off the presses, its translator felt compelled
to insist on the novelty of the book’s contents compared to the flood of
other texts that had appeared in recent memory.78
But the Europe that received these Jesuit relations was not the same as
the one left behind by the missionaries when they had departed for Asia.
Even the first group of Moderns to arrive in China in the 1650s, the au-
thors of the books published in Europe in the 1670s and 1680s, had never
beheld the glory of the Sun King. On the whole, the China Jesuits had an
outdated knowledge of the political situation in their homelands. Because
communications between Europe and Asia were sporadic, the certainties
they held dear—such as the Society’s exclusive privilege to preach in
China or the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the archbishop of Goa, and by
extension the king of Portugal, over South and East Asia, known as the
Padroado—bore little resemblance to reality in the last quarter of the sev-
enteenth century. With a new political tune from Paris drowning out the
ever fainter drone from Madrid and Lisbon, the grandiose donations
made by former popes to former kings seemed irrelevant at best and ob-
structionist at worst. And with the Spanish and Portuguese monarchs em-
broiled in a protracted war of succession, one that lasted from 1640 to
1668, they were in no position to hold firm over all the imperial domin-
ions previously claimed by them. To make matters worse, forceful Spanish
diplomacy at Rome had stifled any influence that the Portuguese crown
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could have exercised over the papacy. But by the 1680s Spain had ceded its
sway over Rome to France, and a new wave of French and Francophile
Italian prelates had little taste for the overblown claims and incessant
quarrels of their Iberian counterparts. They had their own agenda to pur-
sue, one that projected an increase of papal power in lockstep with the in-
crease in French royal power.
One discordant riff that was picked up by attentive listeners in Rome,
however, was that produced by the Dominicans and Franciscans from
Manila. The friars had seen the China mission field firsthand and knew
that the Jesuits were not telling the whole truth about their capacities for
spreading Christianity there. The staffing problems, internal divisions,
and dubious practices of the Vice-Province reached the European reading
public when Domingo de Navarrete published his Tratados Historicos, Po-
liticos, Ethicos, y Religiosos de la Monarchia de China (Madrid, 1676).79 So
filled with venom was this work that the Spanish Inquisition denied the
author permission to print a second volume. Despite their differences, the
Jesuits had sought peace with the Mendicants by ceding to them in 1671
the Christian communities they could no longer staff in southern Fujian
Province. Missionaries from the Vice-Province also worked alongside the
Franciscans in relative harmony at Jinan in Shandong Province. While
there were never many members of the Mendicant orders in China, the
mere presence of men who were not bound to conform to the Jesuits’
practices was seen as a grave threat. The expansion of the Dominicans’ ef-
forts into Jiangxi Province and those of the Franciscans into the provinces
of Guangdong, Fujian, and Jiangxi spurred the Jesuits to fight tooth and
nail to defend from further encroachment what they considered to be
their exclusive mission fields.
The central geopolitical weakness—to use an admittedly exaggerated
term—of the Vice-Province was that it was shackled to the fortunes of the
Portuguese Estado da Índia. Just as the Jesuits had risen to prominence in
the shadow of Habsburg power and had expanded their efforts aboard
Portuguese ships, so they paid the price when the kings at Lisbon and
their viceroys at Goa could no longer muster the strength to defend their
possessions. From the lofty vantage point of Versailles in the 1670s, the
Estado da Índia looked like an overripe fruit ready for picking by Europe’s
most glorious sovereign. But the Portuguese empire in Asia would not
fall of its own weight. Rather, it had to be plucked delicately with a com-
bination of diplomacy and arm-twisting. Apparently out of respect for
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The Problem of Success F


the English, Louis XIV did not move to seize the possessions of their
Portuguese clients by invading the Estado’s Indian colonies. Instead, he
aimed at Goa’s ecclesiastical monopoly over Asia, confident that he could
smash it by supplying the men necessary for Rome’s project to reduce the
Padroado to the limits of Portuguese rule and not an inch beyond. The
cardinals of the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, the Holy Congre-
gation for the Propagation of the Faith (hereafter called simply Propa-
ganda), had started to carve up the vast jurisdictions of the archbishop of
Goa in the 1650s. In 1657 they separated three new bishoprics from the di-
ocese of Macau: Tonkin, Cochin China, and Nanjing. Each was governed
by a Vicar Apostolic, a secular priest with the ecclesiastical powers of a
bishop. Since these men had no Christian secular lords, they owed alle-
giance only to Rome.
As the Asian ambitions of Louis XIV grew, the Sun King found that he
had a surfeit of zealous clergymen whom he could sacrifice to spread the
Catholic faith in partibus infidelium. If they also paved the way for the ar-
rival of French commercial and colonial interests, so much the better. The
first Vicars Apostolic to make their way to Asia were members of the
Société des Missions Étrangères de Paris, a congregation of secular priests
that had been formed in 1658 for the purpose of missionary work. The ini-
tial locus of their activities in the 1670s was in Siam, the center of French
commercial ambitions at the time. The Jesuits of the Province of Japan
who had been working at Ayutthaya soon sent word to their superiors of
the impending danger to their mission. These cries of alarm became more
strident as the Vicars Apostolic branched out into Tonkin and Cochin
China in the late 1670s and early 1680s. As bishops, these new arrivals
were empowered to make demands on all clergy in their appointed terri-
tories. By virtue of their vows, the Jesuits had the choice to obey or leave.
Filippo de Marini (1608–1682) urged the Portuguese crown to respond to
these impositions on its jurisdiction. He demanded confirmation of the
rumors circulating in Macau that “India has been sold to the Most Chris-
tian King” and asked whether it was true that the Jesuits were “no longer
necessary.”80 Marini gave a more somber account to the royal confessor at
Lisbon, a confrere in the Society, telling how the French gained “footholds
in these missions of ours every day, in order to kick us out.”81
The French push to establish a colonial presence in East Asia reached
Chinese shores in the 1680s with Vicars Apostolic in tow. Ever fearful of
repercussions from Qing authorities, the China Jesuits saw their delicately
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E charting the course


balanced enterprise teetering with the arrival of this new force. The mis-
sionaries at Peking had long served as the intermediaries between Kangxi
and the European powers in Maritime Asia, advancing primarily the in-
terests of the Portuguese crown and its representatives at Macau. This task
had not been terribly difficult because the array of European participants
in the China trade had evolved little over the course of the seventeenth
century. Macau, Batavia, and Manila were all known quantities to the
Qing rulers. The brusque arrival of the French in Fujian Province, outside
the standard channel of communication stretching from Canton to Pe-
king, not to mention their forceful relations with Chinese client states
such as Siam, immediately put the Vice-Province on edge.
As far as the Jesuits were concerned, the arrival of the Vicars Apostolic
was the start of a slow-motion replay of the events that had taken place in
Siam and Vietnam. The papacy had cleared the way in 1673 when it de-
clared China open to evangelization by secular priests, in addition to
members of any Catholic religious order. Not only did this move aim to
enhance Roman control over the mission by adding a layer of loyal over-
sight, but also it sought to dilute the predominance of the Jesuits as
church representatives in China. For the Jesuits, the most pressing issue
was the question of obedience, especially since the French Vicars Apos-
tolic were not predisposed to accept the Society’s view on the Chinese
Rites. They also feared that the bishops would inform the Qing authori-
ties of their precedence over any Jesuits working in their jurisdictions—in
apparent confirmation of the oft-repeated Chinese claim that the Jesuits
and their Western allies had secret designs to conquer China.
Luckily for the Vice-Province, François Pallu (1626–1684), the first
Vicar Apostolic to reach China, disembarked in Fujian Province, where
local officials were at least partially aware of the differences between the
Europeans. It is likely for this reason that the presence of one more group
of priests did not cause much of a stir among provincial mandarins. Pallu’s
arrival did, however, upset the Jesuits. His demand that they submit to his
authority by swearing an oath of loyalty was rejected, even in the face of
excommunication.82 Vice-Provincial Ferdinand Verbiest was reported to
have summed up the Jesuits’ position by declaring that it would be a
“mortal sin to swear such an oath.” Verbiest reasoned that since the re-
cently arrived bishop was unaware of Chinese actualities, he was liable to
“ordain things prejudicial and destructive to the mission.”83 Claiming
obedience to the archbishop of Goa and denouncing the uninformed pol-
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The Problem of Success F


icies of the Vicars Apostolic, the Jesuits referred their case to Rome. With
the death of Pallu in 1684 and the revocation of the oaths imposed by the
Vicars Apostolic in 1689, they were able to postpone their conflicts with
the agents of the Propaganda for another few years.
If all of these challenges to the Vice-Province’s position in the Qing em-
pire were distant annoyances, the arrival of a group of French Jesuits des-
tined for service at the imperial court in 1687 was a grave crisis close at
hand. This was the other major policy initiative of the Moderns, the ones
who had insisted on the ordination of Chinese priests. And just like that
move, it caused severe internal divisions. The origins of this crisis can be
traced back to the 1670s, when the Vice-Province confronted a lack of se-
rious candidates to take over at the Imperial Astronomical Bureau after
the death of Ferdinand Verbiest. During his tenure as Vice-Provincial in
1678, Verbiest had dispatched a series of letters to the Jesuit colleges in the
Germanic lands, hoping to spark missionary vocations among his mathe-
matically minded junior confreres.84 His Flemish colleague at the court,
Antoine Thomas (1644–1709), seconded these efforts, suggesting that re-
cruits set out for China from Europe by any route, overland or by sea
on Dutch, English, or French ships. Philippe Couplet had made simi-
lar appeals to his confreres during his visit to Paris in 1684, reiterating
Verbiest’s call for Jesuit savants to come to the Qing empire. These re-
quests played no small role in Louis XIV’s decision to appoint five Jesuits
as “Mathématiciens du Roy” in 1685 with the charge of setting up a
French academic outpost at Peking.
Modern scholars have reserved a major place within the history of the
Society’s China enterprise for the French missionary-scientists. To be sure,
the sheer mass of printed propaganda that they produced at the cultural
capital of late-seventeenth-century Europe was enough to collapse even
the most sturdy of bookshelves. But one should not lose sight of the fact
that these five Jesuits were sent to China as royal emissaries, the represen-
tatives of the Sun King to his counterpart on the far side of the globe.
Though members of the Society of Jesus, they were not sent to Peking
through the standard channels traveled by generations of missionaries.
That means they did not travel first to Lisbon, then on to Goa and even-
tually to Macau, in order to be integrated into the Vice-Province of
China. These French missionaries had no desire to join the efforts of their
confreres in the Portuguese Assistancy and did not feel obliged to obey
any non-French superiors. Rather, they saw themselves as an independent
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French effort in the service of the crown. In this respect, most of the
events surrounding their stay at Peking or elsewhere in the years after their
arrival fall outside the scope of this book.
When Jean de Fontaney (1643–1710) and his four colleagues disem-
barked at Ningbo in Zhejiang Province on July 23, 1687, the Vice-Prov-
ince’s hierarchy found itself in an extremely complicated position. Not
only had the French been detained by local mandarins, to whom they in-
sisted that they were friends of Ferdinand Verbiest, but also they had
come from Siam, a Chinese client state embroiled in a revolt against
its king and his French allies. Vice-Provincial Intorcetta, feeling over-
whelmed by the string of crises facing the mission, confessed to his superi-
ors in Rome, “I do not know if there has ever been a time when this Vice-
Province has faced such serious affairs as those which have transpired dur-
ing my time governing.”85 Intorcetta’s fears about a backlash against the
mission as a result of these new arrivals were partly allayed when the
Kangxi emperor personally summoned the French to Peking, brushing
aside the objections of the Ministry of Rites.86
Shortly afterwards, as the French Jesuits began their trek to the court,
Intorcetta naïvely ruminated on where the new missionaries would be of
most help to the Vice-Province. During the autumn of 1687 and the win-
ter of 1688, he wrote to Visitor Simão Martins (1619–1688) at Macau and
his successor Francesco Saverio Filippucci in defense of the recent arrivals.
After they had been received at Peking, Intorcetta proposed sending them
to the most vulnerable mission stations, those in Hanzhong or Xi’an in
Shaanxi Province, or to Hangzhou, where the Vice-Provincial himself re-
quired help. He also suggested sending one to Jinan in Shandong Prov-
ince, where the ailing Jean Valat needed someone to minister to the local
Christian communities, “and not leave them for the three Franciscan fri-
ars to take.”87 In light of their technical expertise, Intorcetta thought that
at least one of them should stay at the capital to assist the aging Verbiest.
He felt compelled to add that if the old Flemish astronomer did not have
a substitute on hand, the Imperial Astronomical Bureau might “pass into
the hands of the Moors,” leading to the downfall not only of the mission
“but also of the city of Macau.”88
Despite Intorcetta’s best-laid plans, the French Jesuits had no intention
of leaving Peking for the provinces. At first, however, they chose to dis-
simulate their will to be independent of the Vice-Province. Writing from
Ningbo in August 1687, Jean de Fontaney told Ferdinand Verbiest that
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The Problem of Success F


their royal commission was to “give all of the necessary aid to these mis-
sions.”89 Taking the French Jesuits at their word, some of their more sym-
pathetic confreres, such as Giandomenico Gabiani and Antoine Thomas,
made sure that they were swiftly brought before the emperor. Kangxi indi-
cated his desire to see Joachim Bouvet (1656–1730) and Jean-François
Gerbillon (1654–1707) enter his service. It was likely because of the efforts
of the Peking Jesuit Tomé Pereira, a fierce opponent of Thomas and
the French missionaries, that Kangxi gave Fontaney, Claude de Visdelou
(1656–1737), and Louis Le Comte (1655–1728) leave to work in the prov-
inces.
When Visitor Francesco Saverio Filippucci seized the chance to direct
the French Jesuits to where the Vice-Province most needed them, he un-
masked Fontaney’s true intentions. As the highest-ranking member of the
Society in East Asia, the Visitor ordered the three Frenchmen to head for
Shaanxi and Henan provinces, where they would help minister to the lo-
cal Christians. Fontaney countered by requesting assignments in coastal
areas, a suggestion that Filippucci rejected out of hand. It was plain to the
Visitor that the French Jesuits would attempt to open a port of entry into
China for their compatriots, creating an unsupervised channel of com-
munication with Europe.90 Fontaney chafed at this rebuke, informing
Filippucci in the summer of 1688 that he and his colleagues had come to
China not for missionary work but to inquire into “many matters of sci-
ence in the Indies and China.” He claimed that their work was to be simi-
lar to that which “the secular mathematicians from the Royal Acad-
emy had already done in Africa, America, England, Denmark, etc.” To
compound his insubordination, Fontaney threatened the Visitor and the
rest of the East Asian Jesuits who opposed him with infamy in Europe.
Fontaney remarked that he hoped they would not acquire a “monstrous
reputation” by dint of having offended both “the Supreme Pontiff when
he sent them bulls and decrees [with the Vicars Apostolic] and the Most
Christian King as well.”91
The position of the French Jesuits was greatly enhanced by the public
reception they were given by Kangxi, and the Visitor had no choice but to
allow them to create an independent mission. So the French did not re-
solve the problems facing the Vice-Province. In fact, their presence at the
capital and in the provinces helped to exacerbate the divisions between
the missionaries. The former split between Elders and Moderns took on a
distinctly nationalist coloring, since the mathématiciens defended their au-
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tonomy on the grounds of their allegiance to the French crown. They
foisted the designation “Portuguese” onto all of the members of the Vice-
Province regardless of either their nationality or their feelings toward the
French mission.
Despite attempts by many scholars to detect enduring nationalist di-
vides among the missionaries from the start of their enterprise, there is lit-
tle evidence that a strong cleavage existed among them on this issue before
the 1680s.92 It was then that a clear demarcation emerged on account of
the transparent nationalist rhetoric of the French, not the multinational
“Portuguese.” To be sure, this latter set of Jesuits did include Portuguese
who felt compelled to respond in kind to the denunciations they faced
from the French—much scandalizing outside observers. The other mis-
sionaries from the various parts of Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands re-
sponded with varying degrees of sympathy toward their new confreres, be-
traying a departure from the cosmopolitan unity that had bound the
Society of Jesus in earlier times. Admittedly, that same Jesuit unity carried
an implicit recognition of southern European, and more specifically Ibe-
rian, cultural dominance.
Tensions ran highest at the court, where the Jesuits sought to maintain
a semblance of unity in the presence of the emperor. In order to quell his
fractious subordinates, Visitor Filippucci ordered the “Portuguese” Jesuits
to cede one of their residences to the French. Likely greeting the chance to
leave Tomé Pereira with joy, Antoine Thomas moved across the capital to
join Gerbillon and Bouvet. But knowing of the growing resentment be-
tween the two groups, Filippucci also forbade them to speak “directly or
indirectly with the Emperor or his ministers of the qualities, power, gran-
deur, victories, magnificence, or other qualities of the King, or Prince, of
his homeland.”93 Under the surface, however, there was no peace. As Jean
de Fontaney exclaimed, “If Saint Francis Xavier returned today, the Portu-
guese priests would surely teach him a lesson for having thought of writ-
ing to the University of Paris to ask for help.”94
News of the arrival of the five French Jesuits prodded the Superiors
General of the Society of Jesus to take a more active role in guarding its
institutional integrity by protecting the Vice-Province. After the situation
with the French Jesuits stabilized in 1690, Visitor Filippucci wrote to the
royal confessor in Lisbon (a Jesuit) to declare that the China mission’s
problems stemmed from the fact that it had been run for over a decade by
men with questionable loyalty to the Portuguese Assistancy. He insisted
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The Problem of Success F


that new recruits for the Asian missions should be “mostly Portuguese,”
including a number of men with the aptitude for governing these enter-
prises in the future.95 Acting with the approval of the Society’s Roman
curia, the Jesuit procurator in Lisbon responded that year by sending
twenty-six men to Asia. He contended that there had been no want of
willing candidates in earlier years but simply a lack of anyone to escort
them to China. Previous procurators, he maintained, had only sought to
take “their own,” as was the case with Intorcetta, Couplet, and, in the late
1680s, Claudio Filippo Grimaldi.96
The Portuguese crown also understood what was at stake in the two-
pronged French attempt to seize its Asian domains. It mounted a defense
of the Vice-Province by devoting resources in Europe to preparing future
missionaries and defending its Padroado. In order to stem the tide of
complaints that there were not enough Portuguese Jesuits schooled in sci-
ence, a qualification essential for service at the Qing court, Superior Gen-
eral Tirso González sent men to staff the chairs of mathematics that King
Pedro II had endowed at the universities of Coimbra and Évora. The
crown also pursued diplomatic initiatives in Rome that paid off hand-
somely for Portugal but created no small degree of confusion in China. In
1690 Alexander VII created two new Padroado bishoprics at Peking and
Nanjing, removing both sees from the jurisdiction of the Vicars Apostolic.
These new episcopal dignities offered the crown the chance to repay the
Jesuits who had served Portuguese interests in Asia for so long. Here was
the opportunity to name members of the Province of Japan or of the Vice-
Province of China as bishops, and thereby retain their long-standing ec-
clesiastical authority over the missions.
This new set of ecclesiastical appointments added a further, ephemeral
level of church control over the Chinese Christians, but the real influence
over the adherents of Tianzhu jiao remained firmly in the hands of the Je-
suits. For all of the grandiose claims of the Vicars Apostolic and the Pro-
paganda, the Vice-Province was still synonymous with Roman Catholi-
cism in China in 1691. Even the most developed Mendicant missions were
small-scale affairs compared to the tens of thousands of Christians who
formed the Jesuits’ mission church in regions such as coastal Jiangnan.
Moreover, from a strategic perspective, the activities of a handful of friars
in the remote corners of Fujian or Shandong paled in comparison with
the Society’s presence in the heart of the Qing empire. Although the nu-
merous conflicts with internal and external rivals had detracted the China
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Jesuits from the business of managing their flocks, these crises had finally
spurred their allies in Europe to send help. In 1691 the Vice-Province
counted twenty-six priests and three coadjutors, with a number of prom-
ised new recruits on the way. Apart from the “five French priests who do
not want to be subjects of this Vice-Province nor obey its superiors like
the rest,” the Jesuits were spread over nine provinces from Shaanxi to
Fujian.97 Years of hardship had taught them how to economize, and the
wise stewardship of their imperial pensions had helped wean them from
their dependence on Macau. At the start of the 1690s, the mission drew a
large part of its revenues from rent-producing real estate holdings within
the empire. If there was to be a final showdown between the Jesuits and
their European adversaries over the fate of the China mission, at least the
men of the Vice-Province would be prepared to fight.
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The Problem of Success F


5
Between Tolerance and
the Intolerable
W
hen the storm provoked by the arrival of the French Je-
suits had died down, the men of the Vice-Province turned their attentions
more fully to the daunting task of ministering to their tens of thousands
of Christians. In the provinces, the missionaries redoubled their efforts to
provide regular pastoral care by traveling continuously about their ru-
ral circuits, encouraging communal devotions through confraternities,
and coordinating doctrine-teaching efforts. The Peking Jesuits contin-
ued to curry favor with the Kangxi emperor by presenting themselves as
loyal servants of the throne. In 1691 they realized the value of decades’
worth of service when a minor episode of official harassment flared up in
Hangzhou. The missionaries there turned to their colleagues at court to
seek imperial intervention to stop the depredations of local mandarins
against the priests and their Christians. Acting on his high estimation of
the Jesuits, Kangxi ordered an end to the persecution and issued a declara-
tion of tolerance for the Society’s religious activities—a reward the mis-
sionaries celebrated as their greatest victory.
The Jesuits were quick to trumpet their 1692 Edict of Toleration in Eu-
rope with the hopes of drawing new attention to their enterprise. Yet the
mission benefited little beyond the renewal of confidence in the apostolic
effort within the Qing empire. The missionaries were sure that Kangxi’s
gesture would spark a massive surge in conversions and a concomitant in-
crease in the public stature of Tianzhu jiao, but they were unaware of a
potentially harmful side effect: it encouraged their European rivals to
claim the Chinese church for themselves more aggressively. Simultaneously,


the debates taking place in Europe over the Chinese Rites reached their
climax, spurring the papacy to assert its supreme spiritual authority and
rein in the Jesuits’ perceived aberrations. These decisions from Rome
would fatally compromise the mission once they were made public in
China. The disastrous fallout of the papal legation led by Carlo Tomasso
Maillard de Tournon to Peking in 1705–6 found the Jesuits caught be-
tween two masters, both of whom they were obliged to serve. But neither
the pope nor the emperor would compromise in his views on how Chi-
nese Christians (and their priests) should respect orthodoxy.
In the wake of the Tournon legation, the forces that had enabled the
Vice-Province to expand its numbers of Chinese Christians rapidly weak-
ened. The Jesuits could not count on their stature at court as a safeguard
for their work in the provinces, if only because their imperial protector
was no longer convinced of the purity of their motives. The arrival of an
ecclesiastical dignitary at great odds with the Jesuits forced the emperor to
reconsider the assertions that the missionaries had made to him about Eu-
ropean sovereigns, rivalries between different missionary groups in China,
and structures of authority within Roman Catholicism. The clouds that
gathered at court naturally cast their shadows over the empire, raising sus-
picions about Tianzhu jiao and stifling its expansion. The Vice-Province
shifted to a defensive footing, seeking to preserve for as long as possible
the mission church it had built. But as Kangxi created a new system for li-
censing priests that demanded adherence to his view of the Chinese Rites,
and Jesuit after Jesuit left Peking at his behest to demand that Rome re-
consider its interpretations of Chinese culture, the number of workers in
the mission field dropped, leaving scores of Christians without priests. If
the Jesuits had any hopes that the papacy would change its stance, they
were dashed by the arrival of another legation in the early 1720s. In the
end, the Jesuits paid the price for having made the throne their source of
protection. The advent of the Yongzheng reign witnessed an abrupt volte-
face in the policy of tolerance. Edicts issued in 1724 ordered the closing of
all churches in the provinces and the expulsion of their resident Jesuits,
sounding the death knell for the Vice-Province of China.
The Specter of Japan in China, 1691–1693
In late August 1691 a minor mandarin in Hangzhou posted notices around
the city denouncing Tianzhu jiao. When the news reached Prospero In-
torcetta, the local Jesuit superior, he took action in provincial courts, ac-
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Between Tolerance and the Intolerable F


cusing his opponent before higher-ranking authorities. Intorcetta’s case
was based on imperial edicts that prohibited calumnies against his reli-
gion, but his strategy backfired on him. After a two-month delay, the
governor of Zhejiang issued a severe criticism of Christianity and its
preacher. He demanded to know who had permitted Intorcetta to come
to Hangzhou from his original residence in Jiangxi Province and asked on
what authority the Jesuit printed religious books. After upbraiding the
missionary, the mandarin issued an edict to be displayed throughout the
province, prohibiting any Chinese from adhering to Christianity. Local
Christians were forbidden to wear their veronicas or carry relics and were
to remove any sacred images from their homes. If Intorcetta was found
with his followers, or if the Christians assembled by themselves, the edict
ran, they would be punished by lashings and sentenced to “two months of
wandering the public streets wearing a very heavy and very painful cangue
around their necks.” Although orders to destroy the religious images at
the Hangzhou church were not carried out, Intorcetta was frightened
enough to lament, “We already have Japan here in Zhejiang Province.”1
By the late fall of 1691 the Jesuits had learned that this mandarin’s bark
came with a bite. First, a list of known Christians in Hangzhou and else-
where in Zhejiang was compiled. Second, agents from the mandarin’s
yamen closed a chapel used for ministering to women. Not only did they
pull down a cross from the building’s roof, but they also confiscated its
bricks so that the Christians would not rebuild it. Third, a Christian doc-
tor was seized for distributing a calendar of Catholic feast days. On Janu-
ary 28, 1692, the man paid for his crime with forty lashes and “much flow-
ing of blood.” Fearing that the situation was worsening, Intorcetta made
another appeal to the highest authority he could think of. He wrote to
Tomé Pereira at Peking to ask the emperor to intervene on behalf of the
missionary and his Christians.2
Intorcetta’s request was a test of the strategy pursued by the Jesuits since
the 1630s for defending the mission. Over the sixty years since the deaths
of Xu Guangqi and their other elite protectors, the Vice-Province had
placed its fate in the hands of the emperors. While the policy of maintain-
ing a continual presence at court cost the mission a significant percentage
of its manpower, it gained public standing with every display of imperial
benevolence. After the death of Ferdinand Verbiest, one of Kangxi’s for-
mer tutors, Tomé Pereira and Antoine Thomas had assumed important
roles at court. By 1692 Pereira and Jean-François Gerbillon from the
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French mission had earned praise from Kangxi for their service as Qing
representatives in the border negotiations with the Russians at Nerchinsk
three years earlier.3 All of the Peking Jesuits were regularly received in the
palace and often dealt personally with the emperor. When Pereira learned
of the situation at Hangzhou, he therefore submitted a memorial that
quickly made its way to the throne.4
The response, in the form of two decrees issued on March 17 and 19,
1692, far surpassed the Jesuits’ expectations. These decrees came to be
known as the Edicts of Toleration. The missionaries considered them to
be the most important proclamations imaginable, short of a profession of
faith by the emperor himself. Moreover, they claimed to spy Kangxi’s
hand in the specific wording of the edicts, quite different from bureau-
cratic boilerplate. That the first edict, which permitted the Jesuits to prac-
tice their religion in their churches by themselves, should have been sup-
plemented by a second edict conferring the same privilege on male and
female Chinese Christians was taken as proof of the emperor’s personal
intervention. In the March 19 edict—coincidentally issued on the feast of
Saint Joseph, the patron saint of China—Kangxi asserted that Tianzhu
jiao posed no threat to the state and that the Jesuits had contributed to the
Qing dynasty with their scientific and linguistic skills. Yet this view fell far
short of an endorsement of Christianity. At best it can be described as a
display of “positive neutrality.”5 The edict was more direct about the Jesu-
its themselves. Perhaps referring to his meeting with Prospero Intorcetta
at Hangzhou in 1689, Kangxi declared that the Westerners living in the
provinces had “not committed crimes or behaved badly.” He thus decreed
it unfair to proscribe their religion.6
Scholars who have analyzed these edicts in light of Kangxi’s other pro-
nouncements have correctly noted that they did not concede permission
to propagate Tianzhu jiao. Rather, they admit tolerating the practice of
Christianity as it had been before 1691, with the assumption that its
preachers would continue to behave like other religious professionals and
remain inoffensive to the Confucian orthodoxy of the Qing state.7 But the
nuances were lost on many of the Jesuits, who were unused to reading the
fine print of imperial edicts. One missionary summarized the second edict
by noting that it ordered all of the Jesuits’ churches to be returned to their
former state, “and that all who wish to do so be left to venerate God.” The
same writer did not fail to note that the imperial pronouncement con-
tained praise for the “many merits of the Europeans” and (according to his
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Between Tolerance and the Intolerable F


optimistic interpretation) declared that they “should not be impeded from
preaching their doctrine.”8 Other Jesuit writings averred that the decrees
permitted Kangxi’s subjects to “freely receive our holy faith.”9 The em-
peror’s domains, the missionaries claimed, were therefore officially open
to the spread of Christianity.
The news quickly spread via official and Jesuit channels, giving the mis-
sionaries and their Christians cause for celebration. When word reached
Zhejiang Province on April 7, the governor’s decisions were reversed. The
local Christians used their vindication to demand the return of the bricks
that had formed their confiscated symbol, “giving the holy cross its own
victory.” Prospero Intorcetta embarked for Peking the following month to
express his gratitude in person. On June 23, Kangxi received him with
“kindness and honor,” reportedly serving the Jesuit a ceremonial cup of
tea.10 In the following years, reports of the momentous events that had
transpired in China reached Europe in tracts written by members of
both the Vice-Province and the French mission. Glossing over the edicts’
ambiguities in favor of their chosen interpretation of Kangxi’s statements,
these short books heralded the triumph of the Jesuits and the Libertas
Evangelium Christi annunciandi et propagandi in Imperio Sinarum solemniter
declarata anno Domini 1692.11
No celebration of the Edicts of Toleration, however, matched the festiv-
ities held in Macau. After all, the colony had heard nothing but bad news
since the severing of its commercial links with Japan in 1639. The aggres-
sive arrival of other European trading interests in Maritime Asia only ex-
acerbated Macau’s woes. The city fathers hoped that Kangxi’s endorse-
ment of things European would reinvigorate their stagnant trade with
Canton. They joined with the local Jesuits to prepare a period of feasting,
choosing first an auspicious date—May 11, the eighty-second anniversary
of Matteo Ricci’s death. Artillery salvos rang out from the ramparts of
Macau’s fortress, concerts were held across the city and aboard ships in the
harbor, and fireworks lit the skies for three nights. The climax of the cele-
brations came during the procession of the Blessed Sacrament through
tapestry-bedecked streets. Once again, the senior secular priest led the way
for the nobility, the Jesuits, and the rest of the colony’s clergy. In their
wake came carriages bearing statues of the saints, as well as floats carrying
players dressed to represent the lands that benefited from the pious hero-
ism of the Society of Jesus. But in contrast to the celebrations on the same
streets in 1621, where the figure of the Ming empire lamented its misfor-
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tune, during this procession all of the actors “applauded the triumph and
congratulated China.”12
The End of the Vine, 1693–1704
Despite the din created by the missionaries’ trumpeting their elation,
Kangxi’s pronouncements did not significantly alter the way they con-
ducted their enterprise. The changes that did occur to the Vice-Province
during the 1690s resulted instead from earlier policies designed to increase
the number of missionaries in the field. The Jesuits’ Christian communi-
ties continued to expand as they had since the early 1670s, but with
slightly more missionaries on hand to minister to them. Thanks to the
dire reports from China in the 1680s, new priests arrived to expand the
ranks of the Vice-Province from twenty-six members in 1692 to thirty-
four in 1699.13 In addition, men such as Manuel Rodrigues (1638–1698),
Francisco Simões (1650–1694), and Francisco Pinto (1662–1731) pleaded
with their superiors in India to let them leave for China upon hearing of
that mission’s renewed prospects.
This influx of priests was channeled toward the tasks of trekking
around rural mission circuits, consolidating Christian communities that
had survived without pastoral care, and staffing residences in strategic ar-
eas to forestall the arrival of other religious orders. The last of these proj-
ects was crucial if the Jesuits were to maintain any semblance of control
over their mission church. In order to keep other missionary groups from
splitting China into halves or quarters that they might claim as their own,
the Vice-Province sent its men to consolidate its presence in as wide and
as central an area as possible. The Jesuits therefore reinforced their num-
bers in Jiangnan and up the Yangzi valley, along the main north-south axis
from Canton to Peking, and the region around the capital. These areas
were the Qing empire’s population centers and lay along its primary com-
munication routes. With this move the Vice-Province reinforced the ra-
tionale for pushing its competitors to the margins of China. It gave the Je-
suits firm grounds for insisting that their rivals start new missions in
remote Sichuan, the far coasts of Fujian, the mountains of Jiangxi and
Shanxi, and the rough rural districts of Shandong.
Part of the Vice-Province’s project to consolidate its mission fields was
the expansion into exposed nearby areas. With more men available, priests
were sent to previously untouched areas such as the rural districts of
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Between Tolerance and the Intolerable F


North Zhili, the northern reaches of Shanxi Province, and the cities of
Changsha and Xiangyang in Huguang Province. New missionaries were
allowed to put their zeal to work in these fresh pastures, relying heavily on
catechists and other pious individuals to help communicate Tianzhu jiao.
For instance, Tomé Pereira sent a series of younger Portuguese priests
from Peking to consolidate the Jesuit presence in North Zhili. Visits by
Miguel de Amaral (1657–1730), Francisco Simões, and Francisco Pinto to
Zhending led to the growth of the area’s Christian community, but it is
likely that Pereira’s aim was to curb the reach of the missionaries who set-
tled in the company of the (Franciscan) bishop of Peking, Bernardino
della Chiesa (1644–1721), at Linqing in northern Shandong Province.
From Jiangzhou in southern Shanxi the Jesuits headed for Taiyuan in
the northern part of that province. While they did not have enough men
to settle in this area, the Piedmontese Antonio Provana (1662–1720) and
the Macanese Francisco Xavier Rosario Ho (1667–1736) visited the local
Christians each year, “going in continuous circles, confronting thousands
of hardships in voyages of a hundred or more leagues.”14 In Huguang,
Pieter Van Hamme (1651–1727), a Flemish priest who had spent five years
in Mexico before reaching China, set to work at Wuchang soon after his
arrival in 1690. Just two years later, Van Hamme reported baptizing 437
people.15 His colleagues, the Frenchman Simon Bayard (1662–1725) and
the Spaniard José Ramón Arxó (1663–1711), worked in the province’s
southern parts and used their base at Changsha as a stepping stone into
northern Guangxi Province as well.
As these numbers suggest, the Jesuits’ reports from the 1690s reveal an
attitude of wholesale renewal of their enterprise. Older Christian commu-
nities continued to expand, with a handful of new priests encouraging
further growth. This was especially true in the Jiangnan region, where the
Jesuits of Shanghai, Songjiang, and Changshu reportedly cared for tens of
thousands of followers. In Changshu, Simão Rodrigues worked to consol-
idate his expansive mission district, an area including three churches in
the city itself, one church each in Suzhou and on Chongming Island, and
forty-eight chapels scattered about rural villages.16 His task was made es-
pecially difficult, however, by the fact that many of his Christians had no
fixed residences but lived on boats in the region’s innumerable canals. The
growth of the local community—967 baptisms were claimed in 1692
alone—led Rodrigues to encourage his flock to have their floating chapels
“jump onto dry ground,” leading to the creation of a new church build-
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ing.17 Similar gains were also recorded in Jiangxi Province, with Juan An-
tonio de Arnedo (1660–1715) tallying 500 baptisms at Nanchang in 1692,
and François Noël continuing his efforts by baptizing 1,280 more people
in the same city by the end of 1696.18
Concomitant with this expansion came a heightened desire on the part
of some Chinese Christians to practice more sophisticated forms of group
piety. This change came most readily among the missionaries’ urban
flocks, which enjoyed the luxury of relatively frequent access to the sacra-
ments, since their pastors lived close at hand. Various types of devotional
sodalities, such as prayer groups, penitential brotherhoods, and charitable
confraternities, had been established throughout China since the 1630s.
But they only reached their maximum evolution of the early modern pe-
riod in the 1690s, when they began to adopt organizational statutes that
were not merely ad hoc compilations of rules drawn up by the local Jesuits
but direct translations of the statutes that structured confraternal devo-
tions in Europe. At Peking in 1694, José Soares founded the first Chinese
section of the Congregation of the Annunciation, an organization that
had branches in all of the Society’s colleges in Europe and the Euro-
pean colonies. The following year, José Monteiro and Giampaolo Gozani
(1659–1732) founded a similar sodality at Fuzhou, “emulating that of the
court.” The missionaries in both cities petitioned their order’s superiors to
have their Chinese groups listed on the Roman register of Congregations
of the Annunciation so that their members would be eligible to receive its
prized indulgences.19
Despite the Jesuits’ enthusiasm, they could not ignore the crushing
weight of their pastoral obligations. Although new men arrived each year,
they could not tend to all of their Christians. Nowhere was the pastoral
challenge more overwhelming than in Shanghai. Even with three priests
and one coadjutor working in concert, caring for the thousands of Chris-
tians who converged on the city’s three main churches and more than
eighty smaller sanctuaries in the countryside was an enormous burden—
not to mention their followers in another thirty hamlets that lacked cha-
pels, and a yearly minimum of 1,800 baptisms. According to Manuel
Mendes (1656–1741), the residential superior at Shanghai, by 1697 the
number of Christians exceeded 100,000. Others offered the more conser-
vative estimate of 70,000, disregarding those individuals who “neither
confess, nor care for their salvation.” But rather than blame the Society of
Jesus for its incapacity to care for all whom it baptized, Mendes accused
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Christian parents of spending more time teaching their children “letters
and trade rather than the knowledge and observance of divine precepts.”20
Descriptions of the Shanghai church from the 1690s tell how throngs of
Christians who sought to receive the sacraments overwhelmed the Jesuits.
The missionaries attempted to rationalize their efforts by spending part of
the year circulating around their district to tend to women, children, and
the elderly. The rest of the time they spent at Shanghai while a constant
flow of men’s groups from the countryside coursed through their church
to say their confessions, hear a sermon, and receive the Eucharist. While
local Christians flocked continually to the city’s Church of the Savior, the
Christmas and Easter seasons drew the faithful from across the coastal
plain. According to the Jesuits, on these occasions “five hundred, six hun-
dred, and at times many more Christians” arrived wanting to confess. But
even if they spent the night in the confessional, the missionaries claimed,
it was impossible to satisfy all comers. So many converged on Shanghai,
wrote the Jesuits, that the soldiers posted at the city gates were no longer
surprised by the crowds coming to town wearing rosary beads. By this dis-
play, rural Christians could enter the city without having the watch ask
their business. If they arrived without rosaries, the guards submitted them
to a “rigorous examination”—apparently the challenge of correctly mak-
ing the sign of the cross, a gesture that served them as “a guarantee and
passport.”21
This generalized swell of Christians meant that rural mission circuits
were also more demanding for the Jesuits. One of the best descriptions of
the typical pace of these countryside visits can be found in an account of
Francisco Simões’s travels around North Zhili in 1693 in the company of a
catechist. “Normally,” wrote Simões, “the priest arrives in a new village in
the afternoon.” He first greets the leaders of the Christian community,
giving them devotional tracts or images and inquiring after any sick indi-
viduals or catechumens. After these preliminaries, the priest begins hear-
ing men’s confessions. Meanwhile, the catechist explains to “the unedu-
cated” how they should confess their sins. Hearing confessions typically
lasts until dinnertime, wrote Simões, after which the priest leads the
Christians in praying “the rosary, litanies, and other devotions and prayers
of the Church.” Then, either the missionary or the catechist gives a ser-
mon, inviting all, including “the heathens,” to attend. Common topics
were points of doctrine, subjects that the catechist would be able to ex-
plain in detail. The priest would attempt to hear all men’s confessions,
Simões explained, before retiring for the night.
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Mass and baptisms of new converts were usually reserved for the fol-
lowing day. While the missionary heard women’s confessions, the cate-
chist would give final instruction to those who were to be baptized. Of-
ten other local Christians would assist in this process. At around eleven
o’clock in the morning, Simões related, the priest said mass, gave another
sermon, and led the Christians in “prayers sung in chorus, with men on
one side and women on the other.” Since rural oratories were frequently
equipped with nothing more than a religious image, some incense, and
crude benches, the Jesuits often brought portable altars. It was only after
the missionary had offered communion and heard all confessions that he
administered baptisms. According to Simões, the priest examined the vil-
lage’s catechumens after lunch, asking them about points of doctrine to
see if they were ready to receive the sacrament. Those who passed muster
were baptized; a brief sermon followed. Then the priest departed for the
next village to start the process all over again.22
As this description makes obvious, Chinese catechists played a central
role in supporting the Jesuits’ pastoral activities. For decades these native
auxiliaries had been primarily responsible for gaining new converts to
Tianzhu jiao. To be sure, it would have been nearly impossible for the
missionaries to master all of the dialects in the Chinese countryside in or-
der to bring in by themselves the numbers of rural converts that they
claimed. But the proselytizing work of these catechists was not limited to
their efforts when in the Jesuits’ company. Their zeal sparked scores of
conversions that the priests would later have to verify. For example, Pieter
Van Hamme reported that a Christian doctor in Huguang Province had
not just delivered but baptized many children born to non-Christian par-
ents—some seventy-three in 1692 alone. Van Hamme also noted that in
areas far away from his residence, local Christians had baptized another
222 people of their own accord that same year.23 In Jiangnan, an elderly
catechist named Paulo delivered a notebook to Simão Rodrigues with the
names of some thirty-two people whom he had baptized in the town of
Taicang.24 And in the villages near Hangzhou, Francisco Pinto recorded
that a Christian named Lucio Xu baptized more than three hundred indi-
viduals in one year, in addition to “casting demons out of many bodies.”25
This last comment touches on a central problem created by the Jesuits’
move to concede certain ritual powers to a select group of laymen. While
baptisms performed by ordinary Chinese men and women using the
proper formula and ritual gestures were valid, other rites such as exorcism
were, by Catholic tradition and law, reserved for priests. Yet the Jesuits’
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delegation of one ritual power seems to have blurred the boundaries, at
least in Chinese eyes, between the role of the clergy and that of ordinary
Christians. To be sure, the missionaries were caught between their desire
to propagate Christianity and their status as the sole legitimate masters of
Catholic ritual. What they lacked was an effective means of disciplining
the thousands of unsupervised and often poorly indoctrinated members
of the mission church. Undeniably, their actions ran counter to the domi-
nant line of Catholic practice in Europe, where exaltation of the figure of
the priest drew clear boundaries between laymen and clerics. In China,
however, the Jesuits had none of the mechanisms that existed in Europe—
ranging from the exhortations of parish priests to the judicial wrath of the
Inquisition—to ensure that they remained the sole purveyors of Catholic
rituals. Their only means for reining in exuberant catechists was the threat
of excommunication, even if such a move might cast a pall over the pious
efforts of their other auxiliaries. But the fact that the Jesuits recorded inci-
dents of laymen performing rituals other than baptism indicates that by
the end of the seventeenth century, control over Tianzhu jiao was slipping
from their grasp. One indication of the severity of this problem arose
when the Visitors of the Vice-Province requested that residential superiors
keep close watch on all of their copies of the missal in Chinese. These
books, the order explained, were not to circulate among the Christians or
even among coadjutors, tempting them “to want to be priests.”26
At the turn of the eighteenth century, the Vice-Province reached its
greatest extent. Between 1699 and 1702, the corps of missionaries grew
from thirty-four priests and three brothers to its largest number of Jesuits:
thirty-six priests and six coadjutors (including both Chinese and Euro-
pean men).27 Save for earlier sallies by Jesuits to the remote fringes of
China, these men were spread out as far geographically as they had ever
been during the seventeenth century. A glimpse at a report prepared by
Vice-Provincial Antoine Thomas in 1703 for his Roman superiors gives a
snapshot of the Jesuits’ enterprise at its high-water mark.
Thomas began his report by defining the terms of the mission’s organi-
zation: colleges, residences, churches, chapels, and oratories. He started by
listing the four primary residences, or “colleges,” that is, the houses at Pe-
king, Nanjing, Hangzhou, and Ganzhou which had been so designated in
1681 in order to bring the structure of the Vice-Province into line with the
Society’s other provinces. This distinction was of little practical conse-
quence since none of these residences—with the exception of a few math-
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ematical lessons given to Chinese members of the Astronomical Bureau at
Peking—aspired to present the slate of academic offerings available at
other Jesuit colleges. And although all of the other residences were admin-
istratively dependent on one of these colleges, the entire mission was small
enough to be directly controlled by the Vice-Provincials and Visitors. The
thirty-six priests were divided among thirty-three residences, though not
all of these residences were staffed at all times. Because six priests were sta-
tioned at Peking and three at Shanghai, the remaining twenty-seven Jesu-
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its had to divide their time between residences in order to minister to all
of their Chinese Christians.
The next order of mission organization in Thomas’s report dealt with
the physical structures of the mission church. By the 1703 accounting, the
Vice-Province was responsible for 266 churches, 14 chapels, and 290 ora-
tories. A residence—a building with living quarters and a sanctuary—
was a structure that belonged to the Vice-Province, but the other build-
ings did not necessarily belong to the mission per se. Instead, many of
the churches, chapels, and oratories were owned by the Christian com-
munities and had been acquired by purchase or by donation from wealthy
church members or sympathetic non-Christians. Thomas defined churches
as places where the missionaries had space for lodging but where a cate-
chist rather than a priest normally resided. Chapels were specifically desig-
nated rooms in large homes that were reserved for saying masses and hold-
ing confraternity meetings, while oratories were spaces in Christian homes
that were only occasionally used for such activities. Typically, the size of
the Christian community and the wealth of its members determined the
size of a sanctuary, but some donations enabled the Jesuits to acquire
larger buildings for poorer communities. The small number of chapels
suggests that Christians wealthy enough to reserve space in their homes
for religious activities were also sufficiently well off to donate properties
that would be designated as churches.28
By Antoine Thomas’s reckoning, the Vice-Province claimed a yearly av-
erage of 14,600 baptisms and administered the sacraments to over 196,000
Chinese Christians. This substantial flock, he asserted with pride, was
spread throughout the Qing empire, excepting the remote provinces of
Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guizhou. Moreover, Thomas claimed his tally of
Christians was a conservative estimate of the outcome of the Jesuits’ ef-
forts. He informed his readers that he employed the phrase “more or less”
because he did not want to “overestimate anything.”29 For this reason, the
Vice-Provincial did not include the thousands of foundlings who were
baptized each year by missionaries as well as laymen.
As had been the case over the course of the mission’s history, the size of
the individual Christian communities varied from region to region, and
some of the designations used by the Vice-Province for its residences bore
little correlation to the size of their local churches. For instance, the four
Jesuits at Shanghai and the two priests at Songjiang lived in mere “resi-
dences” while caring for more than 110,000 Christians, well over half
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the mission church. By contrast, their lone confrere at the College of
Hangzhou ministered to 1,000 men and women, and their two colleagues
at the College of Nanjing cultivated a paltry 500 souls. Despite this dis-
parity, Thomas described the Jiangnan region—stretching from Huai’an
on the banks of the Grand Canal in the north, to Nanjing proper in the
west and Chongming Island in the east, and to Songjiang in the south—
as the place where the fervor of the Christians was “clearly greater and
more ardent than any other in the whole of China.”30
Outside of Jiangnan, substantial numbers of Christians (ranging from
1,000 to 10,000 in each area) were found at Peking; around Jinan in
Shandong Province; along the Yellow River and its tributaries passing
through Kaifeng, Jiangzhou, and Xi’an; and in the river basins of
Huguang and Jiangxi. Some of these communities, such as the ones in
Shanxi and Shaanxi provinces, had shrunk considerably during the dynas-
tic transition but had begun to grow again by the 1690s. According to
Thomas, only the missions in southern Zhejiang and Fujian provinces
were on the defensive against what he considered encroachment by rival
religious orders. In other areas, most notably Shandong and Shanxi, the
Jesuits worked smoothly alongside Franciscan missionaries. But on
China’s southeast coast, relations between the Jesuits and other European
clergy were tense. Perhaps the Society of Jesus was envious of the numbers
of Christians that the Dominicans claimed in Fu’an district in Fujian
Province. More likely they sought to avoid jurisdictional conflicts with the
Vicars Apostolic and their French assistants, on the one hand complaining
vociferously about the dangers of these bishops’ policies and on the other
ceding the coastal mission stations to them. Abandoning Christian com-
munities that dated back to the late 1620s, the Jesuits retained only their
residence at Fuzhou and focused instead on their inland churches.
Thomas’s report intended to make a clear case for the need for more
men. It was evident that the Jesuits’ thirty-three residences needed to be
staffed by more priests if the mission was to meet its pastoral obligations
and stave off its rivals. Although the previous decades had witnessed the
experiments with a native clergy, by 1703 there were still only eight Chi-
nese Jesuits—five priests and three coadjutors—and the Society did not
appear inclined to admit any more. Instead, Thomas reminded his superi-
ors that China was a vast but highly fertile vineyard of the Lord that
needed tending by Europeans. Curiously, he kept his request modest, ask-
ing for only twenty-four more priests. This number would nearly double
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the mission’s personnel, and with sixty men, Thomas maintained, the
Vice-Province would easily be able to meet the needs of its far-flung
churches and maintain its steady pace of expansion.31
For all of the Vice-Provincial’s optimism, his overview omitted a crucial
element that gravely restricted the mission’s potential: its perilous financial
situation. The China Jesuits had never received enough money to meet
their needs from either Europe or the Portuguese in Asia despite their in-
cessant pleading. This chronic lack of money had kept the missionaries on
a starvation diet for most of the seventeenth century, and it may have
been out of resignation that Thomas neglected to ask for funds. Yet by
1700 the Jesuits did not face the same acute degree of penury that they
had once confronted. One report by Thomas’s predecessor, Vice-Provin-
cial José Monteiro, shows that the mission had made strides toward secur-
ing stable sources of income by investing in land and buildings. In the
1690s the Jesuits had benefited from the thrift of Tomé Pereira, who skill-
fully managed the pensions earned by his confreres at the Astronomical
Bureau. In addition, as the Christian communities in the provinces grew
and larger sanctuaries were needed, older properties were either converted
into women’s churches or rented out. The China Jesuits had also accumu-
lated a cash reserve at Macau from decades’ worth of donations from
Portuguese benefactors. Beyond helping to pay the missionaries’ yearly
salaries, this money endowed the colleges at Nanjing, Hangzhou, and
Ganzhou with rental properties. The same strategy had been employed at
Shanghai and Songjiang, where donations from wealthy Christians, espe-
cially the Xu clan, had enabled the Jesuits to acquire rental houses and
farmland that contributed to meeting the mission’s annual expenses.32
Despite these attempts at self-sufficiency, the Vice-Province still relied
heavily on the funds it received from outside China. In a budget report
from 1700 sent to the Portuguese crown with the obvious purpose of seek-
ing donations, Visitor Carlo Turcotti (1643–1706) claimed that the mis-
sion required 2.3 million reis per year. This sum included salaries of
60,000 reis per year for Jesuits living by themselves and 50,000 annu-
ally for those who shared lodgings with others. In addition to covering
the missionaries’ living expenses, these disbursals paid for making devo-
tional objects, maintaining residences and churches, paying catechists,
and granting alms to poor Chinese Christians. According to Turcotti, the
Vice-Province’s revenues from its landholdings in India could potentially
supply 700,000 reis, less than a third of the annual budget—but often the
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Province of Goa claimed part of this cash as payment for training China
missionaries. Without the court Jesuits’ pensions and the Macau reserve,
the Visitor contended, the mission could not survive.33
Even the combination of these streams of revenue was not enough
to support the Vice-Province every year. Oftentimes the cost of life at
court—and the missionaries’ need to keep up appearances among their
mandarin peers—curtailed the Peking Jesuits’ ability to succor their col-
leagues. As José Soares noted in 1705, his surplus was sorely depleted by an
inflation of prices at court.34 The fragility of the mission’s finances begged
for caution, flying in the face of Antoine Thomas’s requests for more men.
In fact, one of the first things that Thomas’s 1703 report mentions—with
a vague hint of surprise—is that few recruits had recently arrived from
India. What he did not realize was that the view from Peking of the
mission’s finances was very different from the view from the provinces.
Knowing the general poverty of the other Jesuits, Visitor Turcotti had cut
off the supply of new priests. Not only had he ordered that “no more men
come to the Vice-Province,” as he wrote in 1700, but also he sent some
prospective candidates back to Macau. Turcotti had further suggested the
prospect of reducing the number of Jesuits who staffed the mission “ac-
cording to the possibilities of the present revenues.”35 Without a substan-
tial influx of cash from Europe, the Visitor concluded, the Vice-Province
had no chance of expanding further and stood at risk of losing control
over what it had already gained.
“Terrible, Scandalous, and Diabolic,” 1700–1704
From the perspective of the mission hierarchy at the beginning of the
eighteenth century, the China Jesuits faced a number of temporal chal-
lenges. Surely, just as the mission’s superiors had long maintained, their
enterprise would flourish if only it had enough men and enough money.
Their optimism appears to have blinded them to the imminent dangers
posed by their European rivals. Although various Jesuits had sounded the
alert to this peril at earlier junctures, the men of the Vice-Province were
powerless to stop their competitors at the Qing empire’s borders. They
themselves had played no small role in attracting other Europeans to
China by crying for help and publicizing the advance of the faith in that
exotic setting. Their success at public relations was their undoing. By
shouting the news of the Toleration Edicts from the rooftops, they at-
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tracted to China a new wave of missionaries who hoped to find there the
ideal conditions for claiming their own apostolic victories. Once con-
fronted with the difficult reality of carrying on in that country, these rivals
blamed the Jesuits, accusing them of duplicity, obstructionism, and worse.
The first signs of the challenges that lay ahead for the Society came in
the early 1690s. Cynically inclined observers, such as Tomé Pereira, re-
marked that the Edicts of Toleration had brought no great wave of Chi-
nese conversions but only an onslaught of misguided European clergy. As-
sessing the “spiritual state” of the China enterprise in August 1693, this
Peking Jesuit saw only an increase in the “great fervor with which mem-
bers of other orders multiplied their number of residences without adding
to the number of Christians.” In the city of Canton alone, Pereira noted,
they had proceeded with “such excess” that seven or eight new churches
had sprung up.36 By 1701 the Vice-Province’s superiors estimated that
there were sixty-five Europeans in China who did not belong to the Soci-
ety of Jesus. This count included the Vicars Apostolic and their retinues of
notaries and assistants.37 Pereira and others of like mind understood that
Kangxi’s edicts were valid only for the Yesu hui, the Society of Jesus, and
that such a profusion of non-Jesuits was bound to cause grave problems.
One admittedly partisan observer went so far as to claim that as the num-
ber of priests from different orders increased, “the heathens started to shut
their ears to the Catholic truths and the neophytes started to cool down
and backslide in the faith.”38
For most of seventeenth century, the Jesuits’ rivals had been restricted
to the fringes of the Qing empire. During the waning years of the Ming
era, the combined strength of Iberian maritime power and official vigi-
lance ensured that only recruits for the Vice-Province made their way
into China. News of hardship and persecution served as a deterrent for
other would-be missionaries until the last quarter of the century. Yet by
the 1680s and 1690s, the reinvigoration of European trade in Maritime
Asia brought a constant stream of vessels to the coasts of Fujian and
Guangdong provinces in search of Chinese commodities. The same ships
enabled Mendicants as well as Vicars Apostolic to disembark wherever
their captains found welcome.
Along the southern Chinese coast, these missionaries found that the Je-
suits had prepared the spiritual soil; they had planted the seeds that eager
Franciscans, Augustinians, Dominicans, Propaganda priests, and Vicars
Apostolic could cultivate. By 1701 there were six Franciscan residences,
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three Augustinian houses, and three churches run by French priests of the
Missions Étrangères in Guangdong Province. In Fujian, Propaganda mis-
sionaries worked in concert with Dominicans, Franciscans, and Vicars
Apostolic along with their retinues at eleven residences. The high concen-
tration of priests in these areas prompted some missionaries to seek pas-
tures in nearby provinces, with the Friars Minor setting up four houses
in Jiangxi and the Order of Preachers opening two houses in southern
Zhejiang.39
In the last decades of the seventeenth century, relations between the
Society of Jesus and its fellow religious orders in southern China be-
came openly adversarial. Since the Province of Japan was responsible
for Guangdong Province, the battleground for the China Jesuits became
Fujian Province. The Vice-Province swallowed a bitter pill in the 1690s,
opting to vacate most of its residences there in order to avoid conflicts
with the Vicars Apostolic, who, as bishops, could demand obedience from
the Jesuits. It may have been wishful thinking on the part of Tomé Pereira
that the local Christians “conserved a filial love” for the Jesuits, who had
first brought them the gospel, in the face of “an inundation” of French
priests.40 It may also have been the case that those Catholics longed for the
Society’s brand of pastoral care after Charles Maigrot (1655–1730), the
Vicar Apostolic for Fujian and member of the Missions Étrangères, on
March 26, 1693, issued a series of prohibitions against the Chinese Rites.
Either way, the Jesuits’ frustrations at the changes wrought on their south-
ern mission fields manifested themselves in short order. Just four years af-
ter Maigrot’s decree, José Monteiro claimed that Fujian Province was
“very sterile in conversions where before it had been very fecund.”41
As if these jurisdictional problems were not enough, the turn of the
eighteenth century also witnessed renewed tensions between the different
national groups of Europeans in China. Visitor Francisco Nogueira (1632–
1696) called attention to this problem when he decried the apparent
scramble for bragging rights over the Chinese church. Blind to the fact
that their presence could spell the end of all missionary activity in the
Qing empire, he claimed, “Many enter just so those of their nation or reli-
gious order might prevail.” Nogueira conceded that the Society, too, had
fallen prey to this surge in chauvinism. He admitted that the Jesuits had
reacted poorly to their rivals’ rhetoric, losing the sense of cosmopolitanism
that had bound their order for over a century and a half. To be sure, the
Vice-Province had long worked under the assumption that if it owed an
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allegiance to any particular nation, it was to Portugal. This allegiance
was reflected in the fact that Portuguese missionaries had traditionally
outnumbered the Jesuits from other lands. But by the 1690s, Nogueira
claimed, the Italians were clamoring to have equal numbers with the Por-
tuguese, along with the Germans, the Flemings, and the French, who all
wanted equal representation. The Visitor anticipated a scene of déjà vu.
History would soon catch up to the Society if it did not cool these nation-
alist passions, he predicted, drawing a direct parallel to the fate of the Ja-
pan mission after the arrival of Castilian missionaries from Manila: “As
soon as many other missionaries began to enter, the Japanese threw them
out and us as well, bringing about the loss of all of those Christians that
we are still bemoaning today.”42
The primary rift among Jesuits in China had occurred as a result of the
French mission’s insistence on independence from the Vice-Province. In
an attempt to mask internal divisions before the Kangxi emperor, the
“Portuguese” Jesuits were forced to accept the French. A period of uneasy
cohabitation ensued as the French ran their own affairs at odds with the
will of the Vice-Province’s superiors, opening new residences instead of as-
sisting their confreres in need. Tomé Pereira, their most ardent foe, de-
nounced the “scandalous intents” of the French at Peking and their “dia-
bolical plan” to petition the Society’s Superior General to divide China
between the two groups of Jesuits.43 Resentments reached over national
lines, with Italians and other non-Portuguese Jesuits from the Vice-Prov-
ince decrying the “incredible excesses” committed by the French at court.
Alessandro Cicero (1639–1703), a Milanese Jesuit who had been conse-
crated bishop of Nanjing in 1696, intimated to a Belgian confrere that
they had brought “perpetual infamy to the Society, perturbation and dan-
ger to the whole mission, scandal to Christians and heathens, and dis-
credit to the missionaries and the holy faith.”44
Making good on their earlier threats, the French Jesuits vilified Pereira
and those of his opinion in their letters to Rome and included thinly
veiled criticisms of the “Portuguese” in their Parisian publications. An at-
tentive reading of Louis Le Comte’s Nouveaux Memoires sur l’État Présent
de la Chine, published in two Paris editions in 1699 and 1701, reveals clear
attacks on the Vice-Province projected back onto the early history of the
mission. Here, the figure of Matteo Ricci meets his toughest challenges
not from the Chinese but from “his own brothers, European Christians.”
In this retelling of the story, it was the Portuguese who resolved to betray
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the early Jesuits, “whatever it might cost the faith (and also possibly the
order).” Le Comte did not mince words. “Doubtless,” he wrote, “many
will find the gall of these false brothers amazing, since it was they who, for
all their faithful engagement in giving their blood to support God’s work,
were determined to destroy the mission with such atrocious calumnies.”45
But in Rome at the headquarters of the Society of Jesus, where news of the
Jesuit-Jansenist battles in France arrived daily, Superior General Tirso
González could not afford to rebuke his French subordinates and risk in-
sulting the order’s powerful patron, Louis XIV.
Once ensconced at Peking and allowed to settle in the provinces, the
French Jesuits moved to create their independent China mission. New
missionaries arrived from France in 1698, 1699, 1700, 1702, and 1703,
and were directed to residences in Jiangxi, Fujian, and Zhejiang.46 Jean
de Fontaney was frank with the Society’s Roman curia when it came
to justifying the actions of his subordinates. He asserted that the Portu-
guese “dream too often of expanding,” to the neglect of their abandoned
churches. Fontaney further argued that the French Jesuits should be given
jurisdiction over the Society’s missions across a swath of central China, in-
cluding Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Huguang, Shanxi, and Shaanxi prov-
inces. His reason was that he preferred his men to be subject to the Vicars
Apostolic rather than to the bishops of the Portuguese Padroado; the for-
mer were fellow French nationals while the latter were often drawn from
the Vice-Province’s ranks. Fontaney declared that his “Portuguese” con-
freres had enough on their plates in the six provinces under the jurisdic-
tion of the Padroado, that is, the bishoprics of Peking, Nanjing, and
Macau. He mocked their claims to the whole of China by using the exam-
ple of their work in Henan Province, where their man at Kaifeng was re-
sponsible for a densely populated area. “Is this,” Fontaney asked, “what
they call creating and taking care of a true mission?”47
Bowing to French pressure, González institutionalized the division of
the Society’s China enterprise in 1700. Jean-François Gerbillon was named
the first official superior of the French mission and accorded powers equal
to those of the Vice-Provincial. González attempted to retain a degree of
unity among the Jesuits in East Asia by making all of them subordinate to
the Visitors, but to little avail. Not only did Gerbillon and his confreres
resist this imposition, but they moved to petition the papacy as well
to have several Chinese provinces designated as their exclusive mission ter-
ritory. Upon hearing the news, even those members of the Vice-Province
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who had been sympathetic to the French began to denounce them. Claudio
Filippo Grimaldi implored the Society’s Portuguese Assistant in Rome to
stop their “terrible attempt” to create a new “patronatus of France in
China.” Grimaldi recalled that Kangxi had not granted permission for any
specific nation to reside in China but only the “successors of Father Li
Matheus, meaning Father Matteo Ricci of happy memory.”48 If the em-
peror learned of the Jesuits’ divisions and conflicting loyalties, he implied,
the mission would be in grave danger.
Such appeals did little to ameliorate the bad blood in the Vice-Prov-
ince. The resentment between the two groups was transparent, and their
mutual suspicions gave rise to many rumors. Unconfirmed (and probably
false) reports that reached Macau in the first years of the eighteenth cen-
tury claimed that Kangxi was “very averse” to the French Jesuits at court.
It was said that in 1702 he refused to accept the gifts that Fontaney had
brought from France.49 On November 21, 1701, according to news perhaps
leaked to scandalmongers in the Portuguese colony by Tomé Pereira or
someone like him, the emperor had called Jean-François Gerbillon “dirty,
sleepyheaded, and lazy.”50 Such petty rivalries serve to illustrate the depth
of the divisions between the Jesuits at a time when they were confronted
with external threats of equal or greater danger. Perhaps Giampaolo
Gozani gave the best summation of the Jesuits’ inability to close ranks
when he delivered the Vice-Province’s residence at Fuzhou, Fujian Prov-
ince, to the care of the French mission in June 1707. Commenting to a
Portuguese colleague on how he had handed over the house to Claude de
Visdelou, a French Jesuit and future Vicar Apostolic who would denounce
the Vice-Province’s position on the Chinese Rites, Gozani wrote, “I know
that our enemies will triumph, but what remedy is there?”51
“A Cruel Tragedy,” 1704–1709
Rent by internal divisions, the Society of Jesus had difficulty mustering
the strength to defend the China mission in Europe, from whence any
binding resolution on the Catholic missions would necessarily come. For
the Vice-Province, the central question was whether it would be allowed
to retain control over the vast regions that it had cultivated since the
1580s. But since this exclusive mission field covered all but the outlying
Qing provinces, there was little hope that Rome would fully endorse the
claims of the “Portuguese” Jesuits. The papacy had no compunction
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about confirming the privileges of the Vicars Apostolic to set the tone for
missionary work in their appointed sees. After all, its primary purpose in
sending the Vicars eastward was to shatter the Portuguese monopoly over
Asian Catholicism. The overweening importance of the Society of Jesus in
East Asia, linked directly as it was to the Padroado, needed to be down-
graded if Rome was to assume true control over the Universal Church.
If all the Vicars could establish themselves in their appointed areas as
Charles Maigrot had done in Fujian, they would be in a position to as-
sume direct control over the missions. If not, the Jesuits would remain in
de facto control over the Chinese Catholics.
The flashpoint for this jurisdictional battle was the Chinese Rites. The
theological disputes over these practices were used as a wedge in the strug-
gle for control of the mission church. Despite the fact that both sides in
the debate had been granted papal dispensations in the middle decades of
the seventeenth century, Innocent XII appointed a set of theologians to
reconsider the issue in the 1690s. By then, the mountains of polemical lit-
erature that had accumulated in Europe in support of one camp or the
other begged for some final resolution to end the debates that pitted
Catholic against Catholic, Jesuit against Jansenist.52 In China, the Vicars
Apostolic had aligned themselves with the Dominicans and some of the
French Jesuits to condemn the rites, declaring the ceremonies to be super-
stitious and demanding that the men of the Vice-Province be censured for
permitting idolatry. The Franciscans were divided on the issue, with some
friars agreeing with the Jesuit position—though none too vociferously.
The cardinals of the Propaganda Fide also entered the lists, confirming the
decision taken by the Sorbonne theologians in 1700 to prohibit the rites.
And after seven years of pondering the issue, the Roman Inquisition is-
sued a negative verdict. In the face of so many condemnations, Clement
XI sealed the issue on November 20, 1704, by publishing a brief that pro-
hibited some of the Jesuits’ policies—including their tolerance of the rites
and the display of the Jing Tian tablets on their churches.
The tangle of episcopal jurisdictions in China made it difficult for
Clement to make his decrees known to the priests there. Only fifteen
years earlier, in 1690, Alexander VIII had confirmed the jurisdiction of the
three Padroado bishops, and they were generally well disposed toward the
rites. Moreover, the archbishop of Goa still chafed at the idea of Vicars
Apostolic usurping his traditional jurisdictions. Neither the Jesuits nor the
secular clergy of the Portuguese Padroado were likely to trust—or obey—
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any pronouncements from French bishops. As late as 1702, Padroado
bishops could insist to the Portuguese crown that the controversies stirred
up by the Vicars Apostolic appeared to have died down. As the bishop of
Nanjing, the Jesuit Alessandro Cicero, wrote that year to Pedro II, “There
is no longer the fear here that a Vicar or two, set on perturbing the Chris-
tian community, will bring about the condemnation of the old missionary
fathers.”53 If the papacy truly wanted to exert its power over Catholicism
in China, it would have to circumvent the established ecclesiastical chan-
nels. The solution was to appoint a plenipotentiary legate who would
travel to China to sort out matters with the various missionary orders, the
Vicars, and Kangxi himself.
Clement’s representative for this sensitive mission was Carlo Tomasso
Maillard de Tournon (1668–1710), a priest of noble extraction from Turin.
The legate was consecrated patriarch of Antioch and Apostolic Visitor
of the Indies, titles that carried sufficient weight to ensure that his de-
crees would be respected, even if his youthful age of thirty-six did not.
Tournon’s arrival at Canton on April 8, 1705, and his subsequent audi-
ences at Peking set off a chain of events that radically altered the condi-
tions for missionary activity in China. Although he made his way to the
court with ambassadorial pomp, his receptions by Kangxi in December
1705 and June 1706 were unmitigated diplomatic disasters. What began as
a cordial entente at the first encounter ended with Tournon’s public dis-
grace and exile after the second, the fruit of mutual misunderstandings
and conflicting agendas.54 The legation’s fallout had disastrous conse-
quences for the Vice-Province. To stretch a point, Tournon was the deus
ex machina who appeared on the Chinese stage amid all of the Jesuits’
missionary gains to announce the beginning of the end of their enterprise.
In the words of one observer, the “triumphs of the Catholic faith” that
Tournon had come to recognize officially “degenerated in such a cruel
tragedy that the most prudent onlookers saw a catastrophe looming simi-
lar to that of Japan.”55
In his capacity as ambassador, Tournon was charged with inaugurating
a relationship between the Holy See and the Qing empire and designating
one of the European priests to serve as the superior for all Catholic mis-
sionaries in China. While the first of these tasks seems to have been a for-
mality, the second was of paramount importance, because it would enable
the papacy to rein in the Society of Jesus and assume greater control over
the mission church. At Tournon’s first reception, on December 31, 1705,
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Kangxi had shown himself amenable to the idea of creating a mission-
ary administrator. According to contemporary testimonies, he had been
shocked by the profusion of European missionaries in China during his
southern tour in 1703 and annoyed at the court Jesuits for neglecting to
inform him about the total number of foreign priests in his domains.56
But it was at this point that Tournon’s and Kangxi’s positions diverged.
The emperor insisted that such a supervisory role could be assigned only
to one of the Jesuits whom he trusted and who had long years of experi-
ence in China. Speaking through Jesuit interpreters from the Vice-Prov-
ince and the French mission, Tournon refused this condition. Rather, he
made it clear that any such superior would be of his own choosing. Since
the legate’s plan was tantamount to creating a shadow bureaucracy beyond
Qing control, it was clear that no easy compromise would be struck.
The issue of the Chinese Rites was conspicuously absent from Tour-
non’s initial discussions with the Qing sovereign. It had been half a decade
since Kangxi first heard from the Peking Jesuits about the European con-
troversies over these practices. By Chinese tradition, the emperor was the
final arbiter in ethical matters, and it was not surprising that he confirmed
the Vice-Province’s positions. In a statement that he gave in 1700 to mem-
bers of the French mission with the intention of having them publicize it
in Europe, Kangxi wrote about the secular nature of the Confucian cere-
monies required by members of the state bureaucracy and the purely me-
morial nature of the Chinese ancestor cult.57 He further asserted that the
term Tian, proudly displayed on the Jesuits’ churches in the emperor’s
own calligraphy, denoted the Supreme Being. Eager to discuss the rites,
Kangxi summoned Vicar Apostolic Charles Maigrot to Peking to be pres-
ent at Tournon’s second audience. The pair were received on June 29,
1706, and made to defend their opposition to the rites. Unable to speak
Mandarin and incapable of citing passages from the Confucian classics to
support their arguments, they failed to convince the emperor. And when
Maigrot was again summoned on July 26, Kangxi chastised him for his te-
merity in condemning customs that the emperor had defined, explained,
and approved.58
Kangxi sealed the fate of the Tournon legation by ordering the legate
and his retinue, along with Maigrot, to be sent back to Europe via Macau
in August 1706. Things had not gone well at Peking, and someone had to
take the blame. Unsurprisingly, Tournon was convinced that the misun-
derstandings at court were the result of the Jesuits’ machinations. After all,
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Pereira and Grimaldi could hardly be trusted with faithfully translating
negotiations that would be prejudicial to the Society of Jesus and the
Padroado. The fact that they were the emperor’s chosen interpreters only
made matters worse—especially since Tournon and Maigrot had been un-
able to speak for themselves and had not brought along attendants who
could speak for them. As a result, when Tournon departed Peking, he
rained down a shower of censures and threats of excommunication upon
the Jesuits.
Both the emperor and the legate left their final meeting determined to
take control over the Catholic missionaries in China. Kangxi was well
aware that the issues of the rites and control over the missions were inter-
twined and needed to be resolved together. He was also convinced that
the Roman pontiff would never have condoned the disgraceful comport-
ment of his legate. The emperor therefore appointed two representatives
to inform Clement personally of Tournon’s insubordination, António de
Barros (1657–1708) from the Vice-Province and Antoine de Beauvollier
(1657–1708) from the French mission. Although the choice of two Jesuits
for this task greatly reduced its chances for success, all hope was lost when
the two men, sailing on different vessels, died in shipwrecks before reach-
ing Europe. Of more immediate importance for the Vice-Province was
Kangxi’s decree of December 17, 1706. This proclamation declared that all
missionaries had to obtain a license, or piao, if they wished to remain in
the empire. The precondition for taking the piao was aimed at separating
the good missionaries from the bad in Kangxi’s eyes: the Europeans had to
swear to accept the Chinese Rites.
Although Tournon had failed in his diplomatic mission, he was deter-
mined to succeed in imposing his authority on the Jesuits. By the time he
reached Nanjing in late summer 1706, he still had not announced the
1704 papal brief prohibiting the rites. Tournon had also resisted summon-
ing up the full flourish of his powers in order to demand obedience from
the members of a religious order who had all professed vows of subordina-
tion to the Holy See. While at Nanjing, the legate met with Vice-Provin-
cial José Monteiro to discuss how best to publish the papal brief. Knowing
that such a move was likely to have catastrophic consequences, Monteiro
pleaded with Tournon to wait for the return of Barros and Beauvollier be-
fore acting. The Vice-Provincial predicted a best-case scenario of the “exile
of all of the missionaries without any hope of ever returning to China.”
The worst case, he claimed, would be the execution of some of the Euro-
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peans and the “total ruin of the mission.”59 Yet Tournon interpreted these
warnings as yet another example of Jesuit obfuscation and obstructionism
and published his own version of the brief on February 7, 1707. In the
days before Kangxi arrived at Nanjing on another of his southern tours,
the legate left for Macau confident that he had finally asserted his author-
ity over the China mission. But since neither the king of Portugal nor his
bishops in Asia, the viceroy of the Estado da Índia, the archbishop of Goa,
and the captain of Macau, recognized his authority, Tournon was put un-
der house arrest in the Portuguese colony, where he languished until his
premature death in 1710.60
The mutually exclusive positions represented by the 1704 brief Cum
Deus optimus and the imperial piao presented the Jesuits with a serious
moral dilemma. Should they stay in China and obey the emperor or aban-
don the mission and obey the pope? Was disobedience to the Holy See an
acceptable price to pay in order to remain among the Chinese Christians
whom they had labored for over a century to convert? The Jesuits refused
to believe that the papacy would terminate their enterprise in the brutal
manner that Tournon had chosen, and they were sure that their argu-
ments in favor of the rites had never been given an honest hearing in
Rome. They took heart at the Franciscans’ similar reluctance to abandon
their Chinese Christians. As a result, the Jesuits chose to take the piao
while they bought time to straighten out affairs back in Europe.
Several factors urged the Jesuits to hurry slowly in conforming to
Rome’s will. First of all, some of them had accepted the piao in the two
months between Kangxi’s demands and Tournon’s decrees. These Jesuits
(and a few Franciscans, including the bishop of Peking) had bent before
the imperial will, trusting in the former ambiguity of papal pronounce-
ments on the rites. Second, when Tournon confronted José Monteiro and
forced him to yield on behalf of the Vice-Province, the legate refused to
show the Jesuit superior the original papal documents that underlay his
impositions. Therefore the Nanjing Jesuits refused to take the piao—but
they remained convinced that Tournon’s decrees were fabricated. Finally,
since the legate was subverting the jurisdiction of the Padroado, the Vice-
Province’s superiors (along with the Portuguese bishops) viewed his de-
crees as null and void. Clinging to the hope that the legation had been a
passing nightmare, one that had interrupted their work no more than mo-
mentarily, the Jesuits lined up to receive their imperial licenses.
The imposition of the piao was an exercise in imperial control over the
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missionaries. Kangxi appointed his son Yinti to conduct the interviews
during which the priests were asked two questions: if they had “the inten-
tion to return to Europe,” and if they “always followed the practices of
Matteo Ricci,” that is, whether they allowed the rites. These encounters
began in December 1706, with groups of provincial missionaries being
summoned to the capital by turn to choose their fate. Since the Peking Je-
suits—thirteen from the Vice-Province (including four coadjutors) and
six from the French mission (including two coadjutors)—were in the “ser-
vice of the emperor,” they were not obliged to take the piao. The rest of
the European Jesuits—twenty men from the Vice-Province and nine-
teen from the French mission—accepted their permits and returned to
their residences. The four Chinese Jesuit priests and one Chinese coad-
jutor, possibly unknown to the authorities, were not summoned. Vice-
Provincial Monteiro and his four colleagues at Nanjing found themselves
in the most difficult situation. They had sworn to abandon the rites be-
fore they were offered licenses, and Monteiro refused to go back on his
word. Kangxi nevertheless decided to spare them, sending them instead to
Canton to await the return of his envoys to Rome.61
If the Jesuits had hoped that a higher power would rid them of their ri-
vals, their wish was granted in the form of the piao. During the spring and
summer months of 1707, the majority of the Dominicans and Augustin-
ians, along with the Vicars Apostolic and their retainers, were sent into ex-
ile. In total, forty-one Europeans (thirty-one classifiable as missionaries
and the rest as retainers) had been deported by the Qing authorities by
December 1708. Only a handful of priests who refused the piao remained,
hiding in the rural districts of southern China. While they awaited a new
response from Rome, twenty-nine priests and four coadjutors from the
Vice-Province, twenty-three priests and two coadjutors from the French
mission, and eighteen Franciscans remained in China, either at Peking or
in the provinces.62
The imposition of the piao severely damaged the reputation of the
Teachings of the Lord of Heaven. The Qing authorities and the members
of the imperial household who were charged with carrying out Kangxi’s
plan to either register or expel the missionaries became privy to the Euro-
peans’ divisions. In similar fashion, the mandarins whose duty was to
close the churches of recalcitrant priests doubtless began to suspect the in-
tentions of all Europeans seeking converts to Christianity. After all, if the
emperor himself had deemed it necessary to monitor the behavior of the
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missionaries, he would count all the more on his bureaucrats to keep
watch over their activities. The repercussions of this public affair con-
strained the Jesuits’ capacity to attract new converts from areas without
established Christian communities. Moreover, the glare of official atten-
tion likely hastened the falling away of those Christians at the far margins
of the mission church, the men and women who had recently converted
or those who had suffered through long droughts of pastoral attention
due to the limited numbers of priests.
Kangxi’s move to assert control over the Europeans, described by one
scholar as the “virtual annihilation of the Edict of Toleration,” is rightly
understood within the context of the power relations between the Chinese
state and the Buddhist or Daoist clergy.63 By dissolving the ambiguity that
had framed the Jesuits’ (and other Europeans’) relations with the Qing
state, the emperor set into motion a bureaucratic process of defining and
circumscribing missionary activity that could only have negative conse-
quences for the social standing of Tianzhu jiao and its adherents. Al-
though Jesuit sources claim that priests who took the piao could remain
“with the privilege of being exempt from the molestations of mandarins in
cities and provinces, and with permission to travel throughout China
preaching the faith of Christ,” could all Chinese authorities be counted
on to grant the missionaries carte blanche in their bailiwicks?64 Would
provincial mandarins be able to separate the wheat from the chaff on the
issue of the rites if they were ordered to analyze the practices of the mis-
sionaries and their followers, or would they use a heavy hand against all
Christians? And how would aspiring climbers on the social ladder of civil
service exploit the shifts in the emperor’s mood? Might Kangxi eventually
accept one of the memorials calling for the proscription of the Jesuits’ reli-
gion that began to arrive before the throne in 1709 after circulating among
provincial literati?65
The Society of Jesus also suffered considerable torment in Europe,
where it was pilloried by its detractors, both secular and religious, as soon
as news of the Tournon legation’s failure and the missionaries’ decision to
accept the piao arrived. That Kangxi should appoint Jesuits to act as his
emissaries merely made matters worse, since, by representing the emperor,
they made clear their insubordination vis-à-vis the pope. Even before
learning of the fates of Barros and Beauvollier, Kangxi sent another set
of Jesuits to Rome with documents pertaining to the Tournon affair.
The group that left Macau in January 1708 included Antonio Provana,
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François Noël, and a Chinese assistant who later became a Jesuit priest,
Luigi Fan Shouyi (1682–1753). At the Papal Curia they received a rebuke
from Clement XI, who maintained that Tournon had acted in accord
with his orders. José Ramón Arxó, also in Europe at the time in the capac-
ity of mission procurator, despaired at this new utterance from Rome and
“gave up the mission as lost.” After reaching Italy, he sent word to his con-
freres that the pope had become disturbed by letters from China “full of
fire against the Society” and blaming the Jesuits for Kangxi’s actions. Arxó
suspected, however, that there was some reason why testimony acquitting
his order had not reached Rome, since, as he claimed, “the Jansenist ter-
mite has sapped almost the whole world.”66
Clashes, Echoes, and Silence, 1710–1724
Despite the momentous turn of events, the majority of the Vice-Prov-
ince’s men remained at their residences ministering to their flocks. With
respect to the overall development of Christianity in China, therefore, the
fallout of the Tournon legation was not disastrous. Rather it represented a
temporary setback in the overall pattern of growth. In addition to the
Chinese Jesuits who either escaped detection or were ignored by imperial
authorities, there were also priests from other religious orders who lived
clandestinely in the provinces. Benefiting from lax supervision at China’s
maritime frontiers, other European priests managed to infiltrate the em-
pire without taking the piao in the eighteenth century. But the events of
1705–1708 had finally dispelled any lingering notions that the Jesuits were
synonymous with their religion and that Tianzhu jiao was what the men
of the Vice-Province declared it to be. The Qing authorities had finally
woken up to the fact that Christianity bore faces other than that of the Je-
suits.
In contrast to its religious message, the Vice-Province was a tangible en-
tity. It was made of churches, investments, and thousands of dependents
who relied on it for spiritual care. At its heart lay a corps of priests whose
public image and links to powerful protectors ensured its presence in the
empire. Had the China Jesuits forever remained in the shadows, they
might not have been concerned about slights to their social standing.
They could scurry from clandestine chapel to underground oratory as the
“recusant” Dominicans in Fujian and Guangdong did. But theirs was a
public enterprise, built on high social visibility at court and in the prov-
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inces. That is why the very public imposition of the piao forced the Vice-
Province into a defensive posture. Its primary task became the preserva-
tion of the mission church. The Jesuits continued to travel around their
rural mission circuits with the hope of maintaining the fervor they had
perceived in the early years. They also continued supervising the demand-
ing schedules of devotions held in their urban churches, seeking to tighten
the bonds of solidarity that held their flocks together. In the meantime,
the Jesuits made appeals aimed at changing Rome’s position on the rites—
frustrated attempts that continued for thirty-two years after the reitera-
tion of Tournon’s decrees by Clement XI in 1710.
In comparison with earlier periods in the mission’s history and in con-
trast to the copious documentation of the Jesuits’ conflicts with their ri-
vals, few descriptions of the mission church during the period from 1708
until 1720 have survived. It is possible that the Vice-Province was avoiding
further indictments of its pastoral work by stemming the flow of ink used
to celebrate its activities and instead concentrating on the defense of its
role in the Tournon affair and its position on the Chinese Rites. Although
the members of the French mission continued to supply their colleague
Jean-Baptiste du Halde with “edifying and curious letters” about their ef-
forts across China, the men of the Vice-Province maintained an uneasy
quiet. So deafening was the silence from East Asia that the Society’s proc-
urator in Lisbon felt obliged to beg his confreres to send word of any
triumphs of the faith, no matter how small, to share with the order’s
patrons. After reviewing the letters from Macau in 1714, Francisco de
Fonseca claimed he was at a loss to find any news of “even one soul bap-
tized or of one heathen converted.” To advance the cause of the Vice-
Province, he implored his colleagues to send accounts of conversions, bap-
tisms, and churches and “not just stories of clashes with bishops and
friars.”67
The lack of information from China also slowed the pace of missionary
recruitment. The echoes of the Jesuits’ many entanglements served as a
powerful deterrent for members of the Society in Europe who might have
considered petitioning their superiors to be sent to the Qing empire. To
be sure, few young Jesuits were able to reconcile their yearning for mis-
sionary glory with the moral burden of disobedience to papal authority
that all of the members of the Vice-Province had assumed. Even those
men who had been specially groomed for the China mission found them-
selves apprehensive about joining the stigmatized enterprise. For example,
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Francisco Cardoso (1677–1723), a Jesuit from Portugal skilled in mathe-
matics, had originally been sent to Asia to help reinforce the Portuguese
presence at Peking. But upon hearing of the conflicts in China, he peti-
tioned the Society’s superiors in Goa in 1709 to let him remain in India. It
was only at the insistence of Miguel de Amaral, at the time Visitor of
the Province of Goa, that Cardoso decided to head for the Qing capital af-
ter all.68
Another reason why the Vice-Province remained mum about its prog-
ress in China is that it saw itself confronted with an increasing number of
reverses in the mission field. At stake was the issue of control over its reli-
gious message, by then a moot question. The kinship networks and con-
nections among villagers that had furthered the spread of Christianity in
rural areas had given rise to problems of pastoral oversight as greater num-
bers of men and women adopted this foreign religion. With so few Jesuits
in the cities of the Qing empire, much less in the remote places where
they passed on their mission circuits, it was impossible for the Vice-Prov-
ince to maintain a single image of Tianzhu jiao in the minds of plebeian
Chinese. The problem was compounded by the fact that many baptisms
were administered by catechists, men and women who could err in their
perception of who merited that sacrament. Both the catechists and the Je-
suits themselves were liable to be taken in by individuals who sought to
use the public legitimacy of Christianity as a cloak for their membership
in the heterodox sects that flourished in rural areas.
Starting in 1714, but coming to a head in 1717 and 1718, a series of scan-
dals involving members of outlawed sects occurred in rural Shandong
Province. According to the bishop of Peking, Bernardino della Chiesa, the
local missionaries, their auxiliaries, and their community leaders began to
suspect the motivations behind a wave of conversions among rustics. Nev-
ertheless, baptisms carried on apace until authorities began to arrest some
of these new Christians on charges of sectarian activity. The villagers in
question had come to know Tianzhu jiao through Christians living in
their area who were nominally under the pastoral supervision of Francis-
can missionaries as well as the lone Jesuit at Jinan, Girolamo Franchi
(1667–1718). Della Chiesa’s report on the events states that not only did
these sectarians adopt Christian religious symbols and devotional objects,
but also a few of their number even declared themselves to be further in-
carnations of the Lord of Heaven. One individual even claimed to be the
Holy Spirit “come down from heaven to preach the true law of God,”
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since this dubious convert felt that the Europeans had given up the task.
The bishop breathed a small sigh of relief on seeing how other Christians
were able to identify their false brethren, but not before the local manda-
rins began their inquiries and punishments, events that further damaged
the reputation of Christianity, its preachers, and its adherents.69
One story of missionary work that did make its way to Europe in the
1710s was a tale that at first perked up the spirits of the China Jesuits
caught under clouds of gloom. This was the conversion of Sunu (ca.
1648–1725), a Manchu from the imperial clan, along with his household.
In the years before 1712, one of Sunu’s sons, Suerjin, encountered copies of
Christian texts at a used book fair in Peking and had been impressed. Af-
ter circulating these books among his brothers, Suerjin contacted the Pe-
king Jesuits and asked for doctrinal instruction. Missionaries from both
the Vice-Province and the French mission built friendships with these
Manchu nobles, and at length, starting in 1719, claimed them as converts.
Jesuit writings about them go into considerable detail about their pious
lifestyles as well as about their fondness for devotional art. Unfortunately
for the Vice-Province, most of the news about these Manchu Christians
reached Europe only in 1724, after the Sunu clan had been disgraced and
sent into exile by the Yongzheng emperor.70
Desirous of preserving the Kangxi emperor’s benevolence toward them
in light of the legation debacle, the Jesuits made displays of faithful service
to the throne. As they had maintained since the days of Matteo Ricci,
none of their religious ambitions could be achieved without the political
legitimacy that the priests at Peking earned for the Vice-Province. Both
French and “Portuguese” Jesuits thus made themselves useful to Kangxi
during the years from 1708 until 1717 by acting as surveyors for the em-
peror’s cartography projects, including the Huangyu quanlan tu (Com-
plete Map of the Empire). From the Vice-Province, Francisco Cardoso,
the Bavarian Kaspar Castner (1665–1709), and the Alsatian Romain
Hinderer (1668–1744) conducted tours in the southern provinces for this
imperial commission. Kangxi rewarded them in 1711 with another exam-
ple of his calligraphy in honor of the completion of the new sanctuary at
the College of Peking (Nantang)—this time referring to Tianzhu instead
of the controversial Tian.71 The Vice-Province’s superiors sought to keep
up these good relations by sending the artist Giuseppe Castiglione (1688–
1766), an Italian coadjutor, to work at court. From his arrival at the Qing
capital in 1715 until his death there over fifty years later, he painted well-
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Nantang, or Southern Church, Peking. Depiction of the church at the College of Peking, completed in 1711.
[To view this image, refer to  
the print version of this title.] 
 
 
 


known portraits of court figures, in addition to designing a European-
style palace for the Qianlong emperor.
There was also a European prong to the Jesuits’ strategy for salvaging
their China effort from censure, if not outright destruction by papal fiat.
After their futile attempts to resolve their affairs in Europe by themselves,
the Society turned to the Portuguese crown and miter for help. The au-
thorities in Lisbon and Goa had a keen interest in the China mission, be-
cause part of their own prestige was linked to its fortunes. If blasts from
the king’s cannons could not keep his European rivals out of Portugal’s
Asian domains, perhaps the threat of excommunication would keep in-
truders out of his ecclesiastical territories. Even before the archbishop of
Goa received word that Clement XI had confirmed Tournon’s condemna-
tion of the rites in 1710, he sent a pastoral letter to the Jesuits in East Asia
informing them that any decrees issued by the legate were null and void.72
The crown also lobbied the pope by sending Rodrigo Anes de Sá, the
marquis de Fontes, to Rome in 1712. Although this ambassador spent six
years in Italy and was received with considerable pomp in 1716, he was not
able to resolve matters in favor of the Society or his royal master. While
King João V at least got the reward of having the archbishop of Lisbon
raised to the status of cardinal and patriarch, the Jesuits got only a further
round of censures: on March 15, 1715, Clement issued an apostolic consti-
tution, Ex illa die, that confirmed the prohibition of the rites while de-
manding obedience from the missionaries in China.73 Four years later the
pope appointed another legate, Carlo Ambrogio Mezzabarba (1685–1741),
but this Italian prelate met with no more success at Peking than his prede-
cessor.
At the time of the Kangxi emperor’s death in 1722, the missionaries of
the Vice-Province were still ministering to their flocks in the provinces,
but the rigors of age had eroded much of their ability to sustain the mis-
sion church. Their ranks included veterans such as Pieter van Hamme at
seventy-one years of age, Manuel Mendes and José Soares at sixty-six,
Giampaolo Gozani at sixty-three, Simon Bayard and Francisco Pinto at
sixty. Even the Chinese men who had been ordained priests and joined
the Society of Jesus were far from being the picture of youth. Fran-
cisco Xavier Rosario Ho was fifty-five years old, and Tomé da Cruz (1666–
1745) was fifty-six. One might think, therefore, that the members of the
Vice-Province would have been wise to extend an olive branch to their
confreres in the French mission in the face of dangers that threatened
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Between Tolerance and the Intolerable F


both groups; but no large-scale cooperation between the two enterprises
emerged.
Outside of a few instances of priests from the French mission joining
the Vice-Province to help staff its residences, relations between the two
missions were strained. Doubtless there were legitimate reasons for the
mutual recriminations, given that each group of Jesuits had its own ambi-
tions. The Vice-Province’s superiors accused the French of appropriating
Christian communities in Jiangxi Province—never mind that the Vice-
Province could not maintain them. In similar fashion, the French Jesuits
at court hinted to Kangxi that the Vice-Province’s men had impeded them
from carrying out his commissions.74 Some of the Portuguese priests of
the Vice-Province at court moved aggressively against their French breth-
ren, much to the dismay of their more irenic colleagues from German
lands. Such was the tenor of their infighting that the bishop of Peking felt
obliged to chastise the Jesuits for their lack of fraternal love.75 Moreover,
the French mission itself was rent by divisions between the partisans and
opponents (including several members of the Vice-Province at Peking) of
figurism, a system of interpretation for texts from Chinese antiquity.76 At
the center of this debate was Joachim Bouvet, whose readings of the
Yijing, or Book of Changes, led him to glimpse veiled references to Chris-
tian revelation in this and other obscure works. So the discord between
the Vice-Province and the French mission continued. Each carried on as
best it could in its own, separate mission districts. The Vice-Province was
by far the more burdened enterprise of the two, if only because the French
had been conducting missions for only two decades and had a relatively
modest range of activity. Without a substantial influx of recruits to carry
on its work at court and in the provinces, the Vice-Province had little
prospect of enduring.
Into the Shadows, 1724 and Beyond
Afflicted as they were by internal distractions, external worries, and pasto-
ral challenges, the China Jesuits faced their most serious trial when the
Yongzheng emperor ascended to the throne in 1723. Recall that since the
start of the previous reign, the Jesuits had had no other strategy for de-
fending their enterprise beyond that of entrusting themselves to the safe-
guard of the emperor’s goodwill. While Kangxi had remained friendly
with the court Jesuits until his death, he became increasingly frustrated
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with them after the Tournon legation. In 1717 he even accepted a memo-
rial from a Guangdong mandarin, Chen Mao (ca. 1651–ca. 1719), who
called for Christianity to be proscribed. Kangxi, who instructed the peti-
tioner first to “wait several years,” expressed a desire in January 1721 to see
this order carried out, but no action was taken before his death.77 Soon af-
ter taking up the reins of state, Yongzheng (r. 1723–1735) began where his
father had left off, accepting a memorial from the governor general of
Fujian and Zhejiang provinces recommending the proscription of Chris-
tianity and the expulsion of the missionaries. In the version of the Sacred
Edict promulgated in January 1724, Tianzhu jiao was included among the
“perverse sects and sinister doctrines.”78
Why did Yongzheng move against Christianity? Some scholars have de-
scribed his act as an unambiguous response to the failure of diplomatic
initiatives between Peking and Rome, while others suggest that he sought
to be known to posterity as an adversary of heterodoxy who took similar
actions against other religious followings.79 Other factors may have in-
cluded Yongzheng’s attachment to Buddhism, the Chan school in particu-
lar; his determination to impose “law and order”; his suspicious nature;
and the feeling that his father had indulged the missionaries far too long.
Perhaps the best explanation for his proscription of Christianity has to do
with the political struggles that surrounded his rise to the throne. In Erik
Zürcher’s view, the fact that the Jesuits had friends in the Manchu circles
at court—including the Sunu clan, a branch of the imperial household—
made their adopted religion a logical target for the emperor’s efforts to se-
cure his hold on power. That the Jesuits had other Manchu connections
in all likelihood made them even more suspect. The very swiftness of
Yongzheng’s move against Tianzhu jiao, one executed with the same vigor
that he employed to eradicate his political rivals, suggests that his motiva-
tions were closely linked to his accession to the throne.80
Whatever the rationale, Yongzheng’s act was a disaster for the Vice-
Province. The repressive powers of the Qing state were quickly mustered
against the most visible symbols of the Christian religion, church build-
ings and their resident priests. Just as during the Nanjing affair and the
Canton exile, the most intense period of this crackdown occurred soon af-
ter edicts were published. In the early months of 1724, all of the Society’s
edifices—colleges, residences, large and small churches—were seized and
designated for other uses. According to José Soares, some of these build-
ings were “occupied by heathens, and not a few of them were converted
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into temples of idolatry.”81 Reports that reached Peking from the prov-
inces told of churches being turned into granaries, schools, and hospitals.
In Henan, Giampaolo Gozani reported that his sanctuary at Kaifeng was
made into a “temple of Baal.” And in Fujian Province, the Jesuits were re-
ported to have suffered the ironic indignity of having their churches
transformed into clan temples “for honoring ancestors.” Members of the
French mission in North Zhili witnessed the sacred images from their
sanctuaries consigned to the flames, the same fate that befell the religious
art in churches belonging to the Society’s Province of Japan at Guilin in
Guangxi Province.82
In October 1724, sixteen years after the Jesuits had chosen to defy
Tournon and Clement XI by taking the piao, they were rounded up by
imperial authorities and transported to Canton for exile to Macau. This
time, unlike after the Calendar Case in 1666, the Qing authorities made
good on their promise. According to one report of the audience held at
court on July 1, 1724, Yongzheng informed Ignatius Kögler (1680–1746),
director of the Astronomical Bureau, and two of his confreres from the
French mission that the Jesuits were lucky to be expelled alive. After mak-
ing reference to the Dominicans in Fujian who had incurred the wrath of
mandarins for trying to “destroy the doctrine of Confucius,” Yongzheng
remarked that he had ordered the destruction of many Buddhist tem-
ples “and had over a thousand lamas killed.”83 Deportation meant get-
ting off comparatively easy. Men such as Giampaolo Gozani, Manuel
Mendes, Vice-Provincial João de Sá (1672–1731), and several members of
the French mission lived out their days in Macau. Things went even
better for the priests at Peking. They retained their positions (and pen-
sions) at court as artists and technical specialists, enjoying imperial favor
for their skills, if not their religion, until the last decade of the eighteenth
century.
Despite the rigor of Yongzheng’s crackdown, some of the missionaries
from the Vice-Province managed to remain in the provinces and continue
their pastoral work. Informing the Jiangnan area mandarins that they
were too old to make the trek to Canton, and “accompanying their sup-
plications with gifts and silver,” at least three Europeans stayed on in
Hangzhou and Songjiang. Other Jesuits went undercover to continue
their work. Among the most successful of these dwellers in the shad-
ows was João Duarte (1671–1752), a Portuguese priest who remained in
Huguang Province until at least 1740. Clandestine missionary work was
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easiest for the Chinese Jesuits, with Francisco Xavier Rosario Ho, Fan
Shouyi, and Tomé da Cruz continuing to visit the Christian communities
scattered across the empire. Despite the fact that the Vice-Province had
long resisted accepting Chinese priests in its ranks, these men were the Je-
suits’ best hope for preserving the mission church during the long years of
persecution that lay ahead. In September 1726 José Soares could only la-
ment the lost opportunities for preparing an indigenous clergy, calling it a
disgrace that “a large number of native priests” was not available to fill the
ranks left empty by the departure of “the exiled and the dead.”84
Of all of those affected by the proscription of Christianity, the Jesuits’
flocks fared the best. There were no systematic purges, no squadrons of
dragoons sent to flush them out. It does not appear that there were any
large-scale episodes of bloodshed against Christians in the provinces, no
martyrdoms to add to the lists of those who had given their lives for the
faith. In fact, as soon as 1726, the missionaries in Jiangnan reported that
they continued in secret to offer the sacraments to thousands. Romain
Hinderer visited the mission district centered on Suzhou and Changshu
that year and informed his colleagues at Peking that he had heard 5,704
confessions and given the Eucharist to 5,069 men and women. Likewise,
Domingos de Brito (1674–1742), a Portuguese priest from the Province of
Japan, traveled around the coastal plain and heard 4,270 confessions from
women. These activities were not without peril, however, since Brito
mentioned that he had been denounced twice to the authorities for hold-
ing meetings of women in the Songjiang suburbs. After paying twenty-
two taels to yamen officials, however, the Jesuit was let go. “In this way,”
Brito wrote, “we learn to be cautious at our own expense.”85
No great persecution hit the Jesuits’ Chinese Christians in the late
1720s, but their ranks thinned quickly after Yongzheng’s edicts. According
to José Soares, the year from July 1725 to August 1726 was one of “sterility
in the salvation of souls,” with few new baptisms to report. Many Chris-
tians cowered in fear of the emperor’s next move against them, according
to the veteran missionary. With each day that passed, Soares asserted,
news of the prohibitions reached the ears of more and more members of
“the plebs, who are the best disposed to receive the gospel.” It did not help
that the expulsion of the provincial missionaries and the closing of their
churches were a spectacle. As a result, Soares claimed, it had become “very
rare” to see people coming to hear the missionaries’ teachings.86
Perhaps the best indicator of this downward trend can be found in the
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reported numbers of baptisms. Two years after the 1724 edict, the mis-
sionaries at Peking (where both the college and the East Church remained
open) claimed to have baptized 305 individuals, including a significant
number of deathbed conversions.87 A quarter of a century earlier, Antoine
Thomas had recorded that the average number of yearly baptisms at the
capital was 860.88 Similarly, in Huguang, João Duarte claimed 104 bap-
tisms, fewer than half the average of 260 that he had reported in 1703.89
At the heart of the mission church in Jiangnan, the missionaries also
recorded drops in the number of baptisms, albeit on a smaller scale.
Domingos de Brito and Romain Hinderer provided a breakdown of their
tallies according to the age and gender of those who submitted to bap-
tism. Both sets of statistics reveal a large number of baptisms of children
under the age of seven (almost half the total in Songjiang), further under-
scoring the importance of Christianity as a family tradition in the coastal
plain. The strong kinship bonds between Chinese Christians and the
communal nature of their spiritual activities, revolving around the prayer
routines of rural “parishes,” would be the central factors in maintaining
the vitality of the communities in this area. After all, the sheer numbers of
these men and women indicated that they had fostered Tianzhu jiao for
over a century with only minimal supervision from the missionaries. Un-
like the Jesuits’ other, smaller flocks, whose religious identities and devo-
tional practices were more closely linked to the presence of their mission-
ary pastors, the Jiangnan communities had relied upon themselves for all
of their spiritual needs with the exception of the sacraments, and so would
be able to continue long after the Vice-Province disappeared.
The accumulation of reverses in the first three decades of the eigh-
teenth century withered the Society’s China enterprise. Despite the fact
that its missionaries continued to work in the Qing empire for another
fifty years after the proscription of Christianity, the Jesuit mission no
longer functioned as it had during the seventeenth century. To be sure, it
was only the suppression of the Society of Jesus by papal order in 1773 that
finally dismantled the Jesuits’ early modern China enterprise. By 1724 the
conditions imposed on the Vice-Province by Italian popes and Chinese
emperors made it impossible for the Jesuits to conduct their apostolic en-
deavors with the social visibility and legal freedom necessary for building
a mission church on the empire-wide scale that they had envisioned. The
Jesuits knew the stakes of the power game being played between Peking
and Rome. Giampaolo Gozani, for one, voiced his frustrations when he
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informed King João V of Portugal in 1725 that the Jesuits’ work was im-
peded “from two sides, the Emperor of China and the Pope.”90 The mis-
sionaries were well aware that the effects of high-level diplomacy reached
directly to the towns and villages of the mission field where their flocks
were found. As José Soares noted in 1726, there could be no hope for the
Vice-Province unless the Jesuits kept up good relations with the emperor
or, in any event, with influential provincial figures. Without their support,
he declared, “little or nothing can be done in China, as experience has al-
ways shown.”91
The Jesuits’ move into the shadows negated all the social and political
gains that they had made in China over fourteen decades. Clandestine
missionary work was the polar opposite of the goal for the mission set out
by Alessandro Valignano, Michele Ruggieri, and Matteo Ricci and con-
firmed again and again by men such as Francisco Furtado, Ferdinand
Verbiest, and Tomé Pereira. The linchpin of the Jesuits’ success in China
had always been their studied image or, in a word, their visibility. To rein-
force that image, the men of the Vice-Province added a wide network of
political connections meant to ensure their social legitimacy. The ultimate
link in this chain—the bond that safeguarded their mission church—was
the Jesuits’ friendship with successive Chinese emperors. The relation-
ships between the missionaries and the indigenous loci of power had per-
mitted the construction of the mission church, and so when they were
forced to become invisible to Chinese authorities, their enterprise crum-
bled. Absent the political legitimacy they had gained thanks to their visi-
bility, it would have been impossible for the Jesuits to attract so many
members of the Chinese lower classes to their religion without calling
down the same wrath from the state that was meted out to native sectarian
leaders. To be sure, it was the same public image enjoyed by the Jesuits
that had enabled them to build a mission church with a dynamism far
exceeding the sum of the individual efforts of their paltry numbers. But
once they and their religion were relegated to the ranks of heterodox
teachings and brought under the heel of imperial justice, the efforts of
their most productive confreres, missionaries such as Niccolò Longobardo,
Étienne Faber, and José Monteiro, were reduced to naught. These priests
would not have been able to recognize the Vice-Province after 1724.
The missionary enterprise they had helped to create and sustain had
ceased to exist.
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II
building the
church
F




6
In the Apostles’ Classroom
Good news reached the Jesuit Colégio do Espírito Santo at
Évora on April 18, 1622: in a solemn ceremony held at Rome on March 13,
Pope Gregory XV declared Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier saints.
Pealing bells were the first sign of the rejoicing that would last for weeks in
the Portuguese city. Processions, high masses, fireworks, and outdoor the-
ater came afterwards. While the Jesuits themselves organized many of
these events, their students did not lack initiative. The adolescents in the
philosophy classes held muster at the college with harquebuses on April
20, firing salvos in honor of their heavenly protectors. Not to be outdone,
the rhetoric students assembled the following day bedecked in martial
silks and feathers, bearing cuirasses, swords, daggers, and muskets. The
younger boys of the grammar classes also joined in, issuing a challenge to
the theology pupils, who responded by “leaving their commentaries and
picking up their weapons.” These two groups built a fortress on top of the
school’s fountain and took turns making assaults on it with infantry
charges and volleys of musketry. The most elaborate spectacle, however,
came in mid-June, when the students staged a reenactment of heroic epi-
sodes from the two saints’ lives. Francis Xavier’s labors in exotic locales
were made for impressive tableaux vivants. At one point, the Apostle of
the Orient battled Idolatry herself, who was clothed in silk and jewels and
riding atop a crocodile. Shortly before the climax, Xavier crossed paths
with Buddhist monks who were worshipping a “monstrous idol of Japan
twenty-two palms high” and intoning strange chants. He quickly van-
quished them all with a burst of the invincible light of the gospel.1


This pageantry was intended to impress and edify the people of Évora,
the college’s students in particular. What they beheld in the figure of Fran-
cis Xavier was missionary virtue personified, the incarnation of the apos-
tolic ambitions of the Society of Jesus. It was hoped that some of the
young men in the audience would be inspired to join the order that had
produced such saintly exemplars. The play had the further aim of encour-
aging those who had already joined the order to petition for service in the
overseas provinces of the Portuguese Assistancy. Members of the audience
such as theology pupil António de Gouvea and rhetoric student Michel
Trigault no doubt found their desire to follow in Xavier’s footsteps bol-
stered by these visions of Jesuit heroism in the East.2 Both would request
assignments to the Indies, and both would have their desires fulfilled. Al-
though fully freighted with zeal, they set sail from Lisbon with little bag-
gage and less knowledge of the rigors of missionary life. The conditions
they would find in China were unknown to them, as was the métier of the
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E building the church
Central patio of the University of Évora, Portugal. This courtyard and fountain were
formerly part of the Jesuits’ Colégio do Espírito Santo. Classrooms were located be-
hind the arcades and the novitiate in a more secluded area.
[To view this image, refer to  
the print version of this title.] 
 
 
 


missionary in Asia. When they reached Macau after the arduous journey
on the Cape route and across Maritime Asia, they were surely wizened by
exposure to the elements but no great deal wiser about the task before
them than they had been at Évora.
One of the most persistent myths about the China Jesuits is that they
were a uniquely talented set of men who had been handpicked by their
superiors in Europe to confront the challenges of China. It is a tribute to
the genius of the Society’s publicity enterprise that such interpretations
have endured to the present. Yet this notion, like other figments about
missionary heroism, consists of much pious fancy coating a grain of truth.
In reality, most of the China Jesuits, like their peers who worked in the or-
der’s other missions, were no more than junior members of the Society of
Jesus who successfully persuaded their superiors of their vocation for mis-
sionary work. It is true that they were selected from among a large, pan-
European pool of applicants. And it is also true that some of the China Je-
suits were known in their homelands for having technical abilities, a fac-
tor which may have increased their chances of being chosen. But it is
worth remembering that the mission’s recruits were selected not by the su-
periors of the Vice-Province but by Jesuit provincial officers and Superiors
General, who had no firsthand knowledge of China. Moreover, many of
the China Jesuits sailed to Asia in the middle of their academic formation,
too soon for them to have given evidence of genius. It may be superfluous
to add that the perilous sea voyage made the final cut; one estimate sug-
gests that only about half of the recruits survived the journey, and many of
those who did expired soon after reaching China.3
Yet it is undeniable that the men of the Vice-Province showed consider-
able aplomb in creating and maintaining their China enterprise. Surely
this accomplishment was not simply due to chance, or to any master plan
drawn up by Alessandro Valignano and Matteo Ricci. A more plausible
explanation for the Jesuits’ ability to manage their efforts in China for
over a century can be found, at least in part, in the skills they brought
with them from Europe. But how did the Society of Jesus calibrate its ed-
ucational apparatus to produce skilled recruits for the China mission?
Simply put, it made no attempt to do so. Rather, in the last quarter of the
sixteenth century, the Society implemented a largely uniform academic
program and probationary experience that outfitted future Jesuits with a
diverse set of mental tools, regardless of whether they stayed in Europe or
embarked for Asia, Africa, or the Americas. With the exception of the first
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In the Apostles’ Classroom F


men to work in the Ming empire, virtually all of the Jesuits received their
intellectual and pastoral formation within the Society. Without denying
the importance of the individual talents of a substantial number of them,
one can see that elements of this common training were crucial in en-
abling the Jesuits to carry out their apostolic task.
What skills did future missionaries acquire during their European train-
ing that would be useful in China? The primary intellectual benefits of a
Jesuit education were the ability to analyze linguistic structures, the capac-
ity to engage in logical argumentation, and techniques for dealing with
abstract philosophical and theological concepts. But most future mission-
aries did more than just learn these skills; they taught them to others as
part of their training in the Society of Jesus. In this way, they benefited
from being on both sides of the lectern. Moreover, as teachers, they
learned how to manage large groups of students.
Adolescents typically became novices in the Society of Jesus at the age
of sixteen or seventeen, continuing their studies while they went through
the order’s first two years of training. Living in community with their se-
nior brethren, future China Jesuits gained firsthand knowledge of the or-
der’s principal ministries, including missionary work. Their concept of
evangelization, however, was a reflection of the standard strategies that
worked among Catholics in the European countryside, not of those em-
ployed during the Jesuits’ ventures in non-Christian lands. What worked
for Europe might not be useful in Asia. What, then, was the principal
value of the Jesuits’ collective European experience for men bound for
China? It equipped them with the mental flexibility for drawing appropri-
ate analogies between Chinese culture and their own, at the same time
preparing them for guiding the growth of their Christian communities.
Any missionary could make use of a store of well-tested pastoral strategies
for dealing with rustics and increasing the level of fervor among laymen
and women.
Most of the future China missionaries spent the better part of their
lives in the controlled environment of the Society’s colleges. They were
typically ordered to embark shortly after they had finished their training
in moral theology and were ordained as priests. Many, however, were sent
fresh from the novitiate, before they had taken Holy Orders. When did
they learn the practical skills of effective missionaries? Put differently,
where did they get the pastoral training they would need to manage their
Chinese Christians? Not in colleges but at sea. The months they spent
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aboard the ships of the Portuguese Carreira da Índia immersed them in a
cauldron of human emotions. They witnessed hunger, death, and disease
among their confreres. The soldiers, sailors, and adventurers on board
added debauchery to this drama, while their vessels were tossed capri-
ciously on the waves. Dealing with these circumstances constituted the
first sustained pastoral experience for most of the future China Jesuits. In
addition to learning how to minister to others in stressful environments,
they gained experience at managing limited material resources. Such skills
would be invaluable when they headed into China, to mission stations
that were as dissimilar to their former colleges in Europe as they were dis-
tant from them.
Aboard the Trojan Horse
In the early months of 1665, António Barradas, the senior officer of the
Province of Portugal, sent a personnel catalogue to the Roman curia of the
Society of Jesus. Similar reports of men and resources had been composed
yearly for over a century. In this account, Barradas recorded the names
and personal evaluations of over six hundred priests and coadjutors ac-
cording to their age and rank within the order. Deep in the document’s
folios one can catch a glimpse of future China missionaries undergoing
their early training. One of the 134 Jesuits at the College of Évora, twenty-
year-old Simão Rodrigues, was studying philosophy in his hometown. He
had joined the Society six years previously, most likely after studying
grammar and rhetoric at the same school. One of Rodrigues’s colleagues
was José Monteiro, who had traveled from his native Lisbon to join the
order at Évora in 1663. Two years later, Monteiro was sixteen and in the
final stages of his Latin studies. At the College of Coimbra, Tomé Pereira
was completing his novitiate. He had come to the famed university town
from the village of São Martinho do Vale in the region of Braga in north-
ern Portugal, and had obtained the degree of Master in Arts. In 1665
Pereira was a face in the crowd, one of the 176 Jesuits in Coimbra. Unbe-
knownst to him, Rodrigues, or Monteiro, within a decade they would all
meet on the far side of the globe, joined in an effort to preach Christianity
to Manchus and Chinese.4
The three young men were at different points on the common educa-
tion track followed by Jesuit priests. With the exception of the first few
missionaries to work in China, they passed through the same three aca-
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In the Apostles’ Classroom F


demic cycles as almost all of their confreres. This curriculum was laid out
in the Society’s Ratio Studiorum, a standardized “Plan of Studies” promul-
gated in 1599 that was implemented in the order’s global network of
schools.5 The normalization of the Society’s pedagogical program and the
effect that it had on the training of its members contributed, for good or
for ill, to the military clichés about the order. For many Jesuits in the early
modern period (and beyond), however, rigorous organization was one of
their order’s primary strengths. In his chronicle of the Society in Portugal,
Baltasar Teles, a mid-seventeenth-century provincial officer, likened each
Jesuit college to a “Trojan horse filled with soldiers from heaven, which
every year produces conquistadors of souls.”6 While this is not the place
to synthesize the work of generations of scholars on the subject of Jesuit
education in early modern Europe, it is necessary before we proceed to
sketch the progression of future missionaries through the Society’s aca-
demic program.7
The initial cycle consisted of two years of study in the humanities. To
be sure, these were not the first classes that most students had attended.
Rather, these lessons in rhetoric and oratory were the tail end of eight to
nine years of Latin classes. Most of the youths who later became Jesuits
began their schooling in reading and writing at the age of six or seven.
They gradually progressed through the Society’s offerings in Latin and, to
a lesser extent, Greek grammar. By the time they reached the age of four-
teen or fifteen, they would be finished with the grammar classes and ready
to start readings in the humanities, that is, in Roman and Greek poetry
and prose. The curriculum during these years of study included works
from the classical canon—Cicero, Virgil, Homer, Ovid, and Horace.
Those who decided to join the Society frequently entered the novitiate at
this point, often at the suggestion of instructors who recognized budding
academic talent and zeal. The last phase of the Latin cycle thus coincided
with their first years as novices, with young Jesuits beginning their spiri-
tual formation as they finished the humanities classes.
The young men who experienced the Society’s second and third aca-
demic cycles within the order were called scholastics. They were different
from their fellows, who, while they underwent the identical novitiate
training, were identified as suited for nothing higher than the terminal
status of temporal coadjutor. Most of the future China Jesuits became
scholastics at about the same time they began the “Arts Course,” a pro-
gram in Greek philosophy. This course of study began with a first year of
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logic, culminating in a critical examination. The students who passed this
test would continue to hear Aristotle’s works on natural philosophy and
metaphysics in addition to their standard Jesuit commentaries. Those
who failed it were often sent to be trained as spiritual coadjutors, that is,
priests who were instructed only in moral theology and assigned to say
masses or hear confessions. The students who continued in the Arts
Course—including all of the China missionaries—would get exposure to
mathematics during lectures on Euclid’s Elements and astronomy from
readings in Sacrobosco’s works or Aristotle’s De caelo.
After finishing the philosophy cycle, scholastics were intellectually pre-
pared to begin their theology studies. This final cycle was divided into
two sections, an initial two years of moral theology and casuistry, followed
by another two years of speculative theology. Scholastics were typically
twenty years old when they began this cycle, and had finished the first two
years of their order’s three-year probationary period. The moral theology
courses were the equivalent of their seminary training. There they learned
how to hear confessions and resolve cases of conscience, the Society’s sig-
nature pastoral skill. After completing this initial training, most young Je-
suits would be sent to teach parts of the Latin or philosophy cycles for two
or three years. These teaching assignments were an integral part of the So-
ciety’s formational program, and instructors were often sent to teach in
colleges other than their own.
It was at this point, when they had reached their mid-twenties, that a
significant number of China missionaries sailed for Asia. Others left for
India in the midst of the philosophy cycle, which they completed, along
with their theology studies, at the Colégio de São Paulo in Goa. A sub-
stantial number of China Jesuits went to Asia after completing the entire
theology program in Europe. In all these cases, young Jesuits would com-
mence studying Thomistic theology after teaching for a few years. Re-
gardless of where they heard the summas of speculative theology, almost
all of the China Jesuits completed this four-year curriculum. Most of
them were in their late twenties or early thirties at the time they were
ready to join the mission. By that point they would have spent more than
half their life residing, learning, and teaching in Jesuit schools.
It should not be surprising that there were minor variations in Jesuit
education from one country to another. Such differences were important
in China, since the Vice-Province drew recruits from across Europe. To
give but one example, the colleges in the Society’s Province of Flandro-
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Belgica (roughly equivalent to the northern half of what now is Bel-
gium plus the Netherlands) taught the Arts Course in two years instead
of three. This fact serves to dispel the impression that one gets by glanc-
ing at the Vice-Province’s personnel catalogues and seeing men such as
Ferdinand Verbiest and Philippe Couplet, both known for their academic
achievements, listed as having less philosophy training than their Portu-
guese, German, French, or Italian confreres.8 Although such differences
were permitted under the flexible pedagogical framework prescribed by
the Ratio Studiorum, the institutional push toward standardization within
the Society meant that they remained the exception rather than the rule.
The Vice-Province’s catalogues from the early seventeenth through the
early eighteenth centuries therefore reveal an impressive consistency. In
the overwhelming majority of cases, missionaries are listed with the nota-
tion “Studuit in Societate humaniorum litterarum annos 2, philosophiae
annos 3, theologiae annos 4.”9
Which elements of this nine-year course of study were most useful for
missionaries in China? To many readers, the answer may seem self-evident
in light of the curriculum’s strong dose of classical thought. But while the
Jesuits’ training in rhetoric no doubt made them compelling preachers,
the sermons they gave to their Chinese followers did not require the deft
manipulation of European literary or biblical allusions. Moreover, the
missionaries’ writings in Chinese demanded a style vastly different from
that of the Ciceronian register. Indeed, the production of Annual Let-
ters was the only rhetorical task in a European mode that was required of
the men of the Vice-Province, and this burden often fell to its freshest re-
cruit. So the primary benefit of the Jesuits’ education lay in the cultivation
of a methodical frame of mind rather than in literary content or prose
style.
Naturally, one of the prospective missionary’s most important skills was
the ability to learn spoken and written Chinese. It is important to under-
score the fact that future China Jesuits were predisposed to study lan-
guages. Latin grammar was the cornerstone of the Society’s educational
edifice, and was taught through the dissection of words and phrases. Years
of constant drilling made the analysis of prose and poetry routine. The
obligation to speak Latin while at school and the frequent composition
contests among students further honed their language skills. But the Jesu-
its’ familiarity with foreign tongues did not end with the language of
Cicero and Virgil; they also learned Greek and Hebrew in their humani-
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ties classes. The fact that they spent so much of their academic training
breaking down grammatical and syntactical structures, as well as memo-
rizing declensions, conjugations, and glossaries, gave them the invalu-
able edge of experience when they were faced with the need to acquire
Chinese.
Another aspect of the Society’s education program was the atmosphere
of “pious competition” that the order’s instructors fostered among their
students. This technique was one of the hallmarks of Jesuit education,
and a spirit of collegial contestation was pervasive in the Society’s schools.
Pupils were encouraged to compete with one another in displays of erudi-
tion as well as piety. (It should not be forgotten that attendance at mass
and regular reception of the sacraments were mandatory, or that participa-
tion in student devotional confraternities was highly encouraged for all
and obligatory for novices as well as those who wished to join collegiate
literary academies.) Instructors attempted to gauge every student’s abili-
ties, singling out the best pupils in each classroom for rewards and depu-
tizing them to review lessons with the others. At different points during
the year, the colleges would hold academic games. Students at each level
of study would compete in their discipline, with grammar students com-
posing prose texts, rhetoric pupils writing epigrams and delivering ora-
tory, and philosophy and theology students holding disputations. The
advanced philosophy and theology pupils also made presentations of aca-
demic reasoning before audiences of local worthies, such as lawyers and
prelates. No doubt future missionaries gained much of value from such
opportunities for debating and public speaking. In their student years,
however, their eyes were fixed on the prizes (typically books or devo-
tional objects) offered to the winners. Not surprisingly, future missionar-
ies brought this pedagogical approach with them to China, using it to fos-
ter greater piety and doctrinal knowledge among their Christians.
Here it may be worthwhile to pause and consider the importance of the
missionaries’ education in the sciences during their training in Europe.
No other category of Western erudition is as closely associated with the
China Jesuits as natural philosophy or, more specifically, mathematics and
astronomy. There are many good reasons for this—not least being the Je-
suits’ propaganda efforts in the seventeenth century. A voluminous histo-
riography explains their scientific activities in far greater detail than I
can afford here. It should be noted, however, that as the chronology of
the mission suggests, the Jesuits’ “scientific encounters” with the Chi-
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nese were, after the mission’s first few decades, restricted to the court.
Moreover, the vast majority of Chinese Christians had little interest in
the Western science and technology that the missionaries used to win
friendships among the educated elite. Neither of these factors should de-
tract from the accomplishments of a handful of missionaries who were
trained in mathematics and channeled elements of European scientific
thought to an enthusiastic Chinese audience. Men such as Johann Terrenz
Schreck, a physician, naturalist, mathematician, and member of the Ro-
man Accademia dei Lincei, played important roles in securing the mis-
sion’s political foundations through their erudition. Yet to assume that the
China Jesuits were uniformly capable of discussing mathematics or as-
tronomy with erudite Chinese is to misunderstand the place they attri-
buted to science within their enterprise.
In 1616 mission superior Niccolò Longobardo alerted the Society’s hier-
archy in Rome about the level of scientific knowledge necessary among re-
cruits for China. He understood the stakes involved in the policy of hav-
ing some of his subordinates tout their technical expertise at court. This is
why he instructed Nicolas Trigault to return to China with “a pair of illus-
trious mathematicians.” As far as the rest of the missionaries were con-
cerned, Longobardo insisted that they only needed to be able to under-
stand the books that were printed by their colleagues at the court.10 The
segment of the philosophy cycle that dealt with Euclid might suffice to
give recruits the “mediocre knowledge of mathematics” that he claimed
they needed.11 Those who lacked this background, however, could benefit
from the mathematics classes taught at the College of Macau during the
1610s, where Francesco Sambiasi was among the instructors.
Longobardo’s plan for using Macau as a training center, however,
would not last long. By the mid-1620s the exiled Japan Jesuits had evicted
their brethren from the Society’s college in the Portuguese colony. But this
was no great tragedy for the Vice-Province. By the 1630s the need for
mathematics classes was greatly reduced by events inside the Ming em-
pire. The Peking Jesuits’ commission work on the imperial calendar in the
1630s, the decline of Ming institutions staffed by the priests’ erudite inter-
locutors, and the growth of plebeian Christian communities outside the
court all meant that the Vice-Province could shift its efforts elsewhere.
After that point, scientific training came to the Jesuits piecemeal, if at
all. Ferdinand Verbiest, for one, gained a significant part of his astron-
omy training during the initial leg of his journey to Macau in 1656. “Un-
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der the stars at night,” he wrote, procurator Martino Martini taught him
“not superstitious astrology, but the principles of astronomy and about
the rising stars.”12
On the whole, missionaries outside Peking felt little need to keep their
scientific skills sharp. José Soares, for one, was surprised when Visitor
Francesco Saverio Filippucci ordered him to depart for the capital from
his Shanxi Province mission station in 1688. Soares was given the daunting
task of educating himself in “astronomical computation” so he could take
the place of Verbiest, the recently deceased director of the Astronomical
Bureau—a challenge he declined by claiming that the “easy principles” of
calculation which he had learned for curiosity’s sake in Portugal would
serve “for nothing” in Peking.13 To be sure, this was not the first time that
the gulf between the scientific erudition of the court Jesuits and their
brethren in the provinces was revealed. In 1649 a Franciscan in Fujian
Province wrote to a confrere in Manila about his conflicts with Pietro
Canevari. The ignorance of this Italian, wrote Friar Antonio de Santa
Maria Caballero, was proof positive that “the Jesuit priests who come to
work here as missionaries are not all Solomons in science, as they boast.”14
“Telling Them the Method”
On May 26, 1602, Álvaro Semedo signed the register of novices at the
Colégio do Espírito Santo in Évora. He made a declaration that his par-
ents were Fernão Gomes Semedo and Leonor Vaz Forçada and that he was
a native of the town of Nisa in the bishopric of Portalegre in central Por-
tugal. Semedo, a student in the first year of the humanities cycle, had
been admitted to probationary status as a scholastic on April 30. During
the first weeks of the novitiate, João de Sousa, the local “master of nov-
ices,” made an examination of the seventeen-year-old postulant’s claims
about himself and his family origins. Sousa noted that the young man ap-
peared free of any impediments, such as other religious vows, Moorish or
Jewish ancestry, or a wife. Semedo also testified that he was willing to un-
dergo the probationary experiences required by the Society of Jesus and
that he knew he could be dismissed at any point during that period. Over
the next two years the postulant and his superiors added notes to this reg-
ister on four occasions. The notations were made at intervals of roughly
six months, leading up to the last entry on May 1, 1604. About sixty years
later a Jesuit superior at Évora returned to Semedo’s page to add a com-
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In the Apostles’ Classroom F


ment about the ministries of the former novice. Unlike the entries for the
139 postulants in the register whose declarations were crossed out after
their dismissal from the Society of Jesus, the note about Semedo resem-
bled those of his 58 peers who left the novitiate for the overseas missions:
“Went to Japan and entered into China.”15
During the two years that he spent as a novice, Semedo was instructed
in the common devotions and corporate behavior of the Society of Jesus.
He lived in a cloistered area of the local college with his fellows, proceed-
ing along the order’s academic track and partaking in communal religious
activities. Similar to the probationary practices of other orders, the Jesuit
novitiate included daily devotional routines, attendance at mass, medita-
tive prayer, readings from scripture and Catholic authors, and humble
chores. The Society’s unique feature was the length of its period of proba-
tion. Instead of one year, Jesuits underwent three. This series of experi-
ences, lasting for two initial years of novitiate training upon entry into the
order and a third probationary year after completing the academic pro-
gram, was designed to steel the men of the Society for the rigors of pasto-
ral work beyond the walls of their residences. For Baltasar Teles, the for-
mation of new Jesuits was like the gestation of elephants. Citing Pliny the
Elder, he related how these animals spent two years in their mother’s
womb “in order to gain the strength to suffer future trials, not be intimi-
dated by burdens, and scoff at difficulties.” Like elephants whose duties
included charging into battle and striking fear in other creatures, the Soci-
ety had its prolonged probationary period so its men would be ready to
“travel the entire world, conversing with the most pertinacious heretics,
dealing with the most dissolute sinners, breaching all boundaries regard-
less of danger to hear confessions, to preach to heathens, to dispute with
Lutherans, to work with barbarians, grappling with the dangers of the
whole world.”16
Teles’s comments, written to commemorate the centenary anniversary
of the Society in 1640, contain no small amount of bombast. Yet they are
also a reflection of the reality of the experience of young Jesuits. The first
two years of training that future missionaries underwent as novices di-
rectly contributed to their ability to confront the task of working in
China. It goes without saying that a strong grounding in Catholic devo-
tions was indispensable for those whose chosen ministry was to propagate
Christianity. From an institutional perspective, the most enduring legacy
of their probationary experience was the Jesuits’ powerful sense of corpo-
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rate unity—their vaunted “way of proceeding.” This esprit de corps was
first instilled during the novitiate, and would be reinforced during the
time spent by young members of the order in the Society’s colleges in Eu-
rope, India, and Macau. Yet while these legacies of Jesuit novice training
were no doubt of great value for the cohesion of the Vice-Province, their
actuality is hard to grasp and as difficult to discuss.
In theory, the third year of probation would also have given future
China missionaries useful skills. As envisioned by Ignatius Loyola and ar-
ticulated by successive Superiors General, “tertianship” consisted of activi-
ties aimed to enhance the spiritual and pastoral formation of educated Je-
suits.17 Tertians were to devote themselves to duties such as preaching,
going on pilgrimage, working in hospitals, teaching doctrine, hearing
confessions, performing lowly chores, and doing the Spiritual Exercises.
The third year would have introduced mission candidates to the rudi-
ments of the Society’s ministries among laymen and women. But it is un-
clear whether or not the China Jesuits actually underwent the third year
of probation.18 The timing of their departure for Asia, often before the
completion of their studies, suggests that they would have been tertians in
India, or even in Macau. On at least two occasions in the seventeenth cen-
tury, however, Jesuit superiors in India were permitted to dispense with
this final phase of training.19 Moreover, sources relating to the back-
grounds of the men of the Vice-Province are silent on the subject. It is
therefore likely that the Jesuits’ activities during their passage to Macau
were considered a fitting replacement for a formal tertianship.
For present purposes, it is best to conceive of the China Jesuits’ proba-
tionary period as the span from the moment they joined the order until
their entry into the mission field. At first glance this may look like an
overextension of even Baltasar Teles’s elephantine metaphor. But from the
Vice-Province’s perspective, the sum of time that new recruits had spent as
Jesuits was what made them effective in China. This period spanned the
first two years of the novitiate, the nine years of the academic track, two
or more years of teaching, and a year or more on board ship. For instance,
in the case of Álvaro Semedo it is clear that although he was no longer a
novice after May 1, 1604, he was not yet a missionary either. Earmarked
for the Province of Japan and sent to India in 1608, he was not permitted
to leave for China until he had completed his four years of theology study.
Compared with the other men of the Vice-Province, Semedo was excep-
tional only in the fact that he did not spend time teaching during the
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In the Apostles’ Classroom F


eleven years which elapsed between his entry into the Society and his en-
try into the Ming empire. That is, he was approved for missionary service
only after he had finished the Society’s academic track and its probation-
ary hurdles.
Which aspects of Jesuit probation were most relevant to the task of
evangelizing in China? Three appear to have been particularly important:
the practical experience of assisting in the temporal upkeep of a residence,
the organizational skills acquired through teaching, and an awareness of
pastoral techniques employed by missionaries in Europe. It is true that
unlike their confreres in Europe, the priests of the Vice-Province had few
opportunities to engage in these activities once they sailed for Asia—un-
less they spent time in the Society’s colleges at Goa or Macau. Neverthe-
less, the core skills gained through these experiences were essential for the
maintenance of the Vice-Province for nearly a century and a half.
One of the most beneficial elements of the Jesuit novitiate for future
China missionaries was also the most mundane. No different from other
religious orders, the Society aimed to instill a sense of humility and corpo-
ral discipline in its members by obliging them to perform household
chores. In an age when one’s social status regularly dictated one’s profes-
sion, such requirements aimed to eliminate lingering sentiments of privi-
lege through obedience and servitude—not to mention banishing idleness
through work. To be sure, these chores did little to alleviate the burdens of
the staff of Jesuit ministers, temporal coadjutors, cooks, janitors, and
slaves who kept the Society’s colleges running. Yet by participating in in-
stitutional maintenance, future missionaries learned how to manage a do-
mestic economy and how to deal with the exigencies of everyday life out-
side the chapel and classroom. According to one account of novitiate life
in Portugal, typical chores included hanging laundry to dry, sweeping and
cleaning living quarters, assisting in the kitchens, helping in the sacristy,
nursing the sick in nearby hospitals, and “even doing things repugnant to
nature, such as making the beds of the college’s blacks.”20
Reports on the Society’s novitiates suggest that “masters of novices”
were particularly fond of sending postulants to work in the kitchens of
their colleges. One superior in Évora would customarily send the more
learned novices directly to toil alongside cooks and scullery boys because
it was “the best way to season their knowledge.”21 This was the case with
Rodrigo de Figueiredo, who showed academic talent during his studies in
Évora and Coimbra. One of his biographies recorded that he could often
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be found “cleaning and scrubbing the cauldrons and other utensils.”22 Al-
though Figueiredo was doubtless unaware of it at the time, his chores pre-
pared him for the twelve years that he would spend alone in Kaifeng.
Since the Vice-Province had no coadjutors to tend to the upkeep of its
mission stations, the Jesuits could not hand off their temporal duties.
Missionaries had to know how to run their residences, even if that simply
meant coordinating the chores of their domestic servants. As François de
Rougemont’s account book from his years at Changshu makes clear, indi-
vidual Jesuits were able to conduct their temporal affairs with accuracy, if
not dexterity.23 While a large proportion of these skills were, of course, the
fruit of their long years in China, they were amply prepared by their ear-
lier exercises in humility.
The second important aspect of Jesuits’ probation, time spent teaching
in the colleges, was not prescribed by their order’s foundational docu-
ments. Rather, it was a custom that emerged in response to the demand
for instructors to staff the lower schools (i.e., grammar and humanities
classes) and a means of breaking up the final phase of the academic track.
The task required youthful energy as well as intelligence, and these were
desirable traits for missionaries. An overview of the Vice-Province’s per-
sonnel catalogues reveals that, with few exceptions, the men listed there
had each devoted at least two years to classroom instruction. A handful of
examples will suffice. Matteo Ricci spent three years teaching rhetoric and
grammar at Cochin and Goa. Niccolò Longobardo taught humanities for
three years and Gaspar Ferreira for four. Nicolas Trigault read humanities
for eight years in the Southern Netherlands prior to his selection for the
mission, while Manuel Dias the younger taught theology for six years at
Macau. Simão da Cunha read grammar for six years before requesting a
posting overseas, as did António de Gouvea, who gave lessons in that
same subject for four years. Michel Trigault, Michael Walta, and Inácio da
Costa all taught grammar for two years, while their colleague Gabriel de
Magalhães taught grammar, humanities, and philosophy for two years
each. Perhaps the most impressive curriculum vitae belonged to Jacques le
Faure. This French Jesuit taught humanities for two years, rhetoric for
two years, philosophy for four years, moral theology for two years, and
speculative theology for four years before sailing to China.24
The fact that teaching was not a formal requirement explains, at least in
part, the variation in the amount of time different missionaries spent in
the classroom. But there were other factors at work. Most important was
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that candidates for the missions had to petition the Society’s superiors for
assignments overseas. Many Jesuits wrote their indipetae, or Indies peti-
tions, while teaching. This was especially true for the candidates from
outside Portugal. Men from the Society’s other European provinces often
petitioned several times before they were permitted to travel to Lisbon.
Antoine Thomas, for instance, taught humanities for five years, rheto-
ric for one, philosophy for two, and mathematics for two in the South-
ern Netherlands while he waited for favorable news. During those years
Thomas displayed considerable perseverance by writing no fewer than
seventeen petitions.25 By contrast, petitions from candidates at Coimbra
or Évora were more readily approved, meaning that Portuguese Jesuits did
not typically spend so much time teaching. Their province was considered
the natural recruiting pool for all of the overseas missions of the Portu-
guese Assistancy. When they did teach, it was often in India, where many
of them finished their studies. Men slated for the East Asian missions,
such as Tomé Pereira, who lived in Goa for six years, typically taught for
two years as recompense to their brethren in the Society’s South Asian
provinces for seeing them through the theology cycle.
In what way was teaching beneficial to the China Jesuits? The teaching
experience, in Adrien Demoustier’s opinion, was “the most efficient and
universally applicable tool for missionary activity.”26 In addition to re-
viewing academic material, future missionaries learned how to organize
and manage groups. These skills would be invaluable to priests in the
Vice-Province, whose primary duties included teaching doctrine, coordi-
nating dispersed groups of Christians, and stimulating group piety. After
the first half-century of the mission, when the Jesuits’ primary task shifted
from proselytizing to organizing their Christian communities, such peda-
gogical techniques became even more useful to the missionaries.
In more than one province, including the Province of Portugal, the Je-
suit hierarchy had created a system of teacher training aimed at ensuring
that new instructors could manage their classrooms.27 In 1613 Visitor João
Álvares ordered the rectors at the colleges of Coimbra and Évora, the
province’s two largest schools, to appoint an experienced priest to instruct
new teachers, “telling them the method for reading, the ways of teaching,
how to govern a class, etc.”28 Faced with large numbers of pupils, Jesuits
had to balance their roles as teachers and administrators. They could dele-
gate the teaching of basic concepts to the brighter students in class,
thereby freeing up more classroom time to attend to other pupils. By
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handing out rewards for academic performance, instructors fomented a
spirit of “pious competition” among their charges that mimicked the ever-
present peer rivalries among adolescent boys.
Other teaching tips were found in the Ratio Studiorum. This “Plan of
Studies” suggested dividing larger classes into groups of ten students
called decuries and appointing a decurion to supervise his peers. In addi-
tion to facilitating the correction of academic exercises, this organizational
model promoted group discipline.29 While one should not conclude that
the China Jesuits treated their Christians just as they did their pupils in
Europe or India, the missionaries did rely on these techniques for struc-
turing their church. It is hard to imagine that a priest such as Manuel
Mendes, the superior of the Shanghai residence in the 1690s, would have
been able to coordinate the ritual activities of thousands of adherents of
Tianzhu jiao had he reached China without the organizational skills ac-
quired through teaching.
The third important aspect of probationary training for future China
Jesuits was their passive exposure to the pastoral techniques used by mis-
sionaries in Europe. In contrast to the heroism of the order’s saints and
martyrs, the conception of rural missions was more prosaic. Yet therein
lay its value. Despite the fact that their Indies petitions were loaded with
invocations of holy valor in exotic locales, future China Jesuits could not
have been ignorant of the routine tasks proper to missionaries. After all,
reports of rural missions were read aloud in the Society’s refectories at
mealtimes, as were Annual Letters from overseas. In addition, young Jesu-
its often rubbed elbows with their older confreres whose appointed task
was to travel about the countryside preaching repentance and spiritual re-
newal, filling the pastoral gaps left by an often lax secular clergy, adminis-
tering the sacraments, and teaching doctrine.30 While men like Francesco
Brancati, Inácio Lobo, and António de Gouvea had had experience
preaching and hearing confessions before their departure for China, most
of their colleagues left for Asia with only this knowledge of evangelizing
strategies. But even a passive engagement with the mundane face of mis-
sionary work was valuable, because after the initial phase of conversions,
most of the China Jesuits’ activities were similar to those of their peers in
Europe—with the added burden that the men of the Vice-Province were
the primary, rather than the supplementary, clergy.
According to one seventeenth-century commentator, the aim of Jesuit
rural missions was to rectify popular morality, confront unorthodox Cath-
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olic practices, teach doctrine, administer the sacraments of Penance and of
the Eucharist, and make peace between feuding rivals.31 The goal of pro-
voking a “good reformation of customs and a great shock and movement
in the people toward virtue,” as one Portuguese superior enunciated it in
1613, reflected the Society’s ambitions for such activities across Europe.32
But what did that mean in concrete terms? First of all, it meant working
in concert with the local clergy to reset the tone of rural ritual life. The
primary aim of the Jesuits was to teach parish priests how to sustain new
devotions, continue doctrine classes, and encourage regular reception of
the sacraments. They sought to reinvigorate piety, not replace it. Their
strategy was to work within existing structures in order to make lasting
changes to popular mores and religious habits. Without falling into a fac-
ile parallel between this attitude toward missionary work in Catholic
lands and the policy of accommodation in China, we could say that this
was one of the most useful techniques future missionaries could learn
from their confreres. Perhaps the best example of how the men of the
Vice-Province reshaped social practices in China can be found in the hui,
or associations, used to structure their mission church and foment fervor
among the adherents of Tianzhu jiao.
Of all the ministries performed by Jesuits on rural missions in Europe,
doctrine teaching had pride of place. In sketching out the daily routine
for missionaries in rural Portugal in 1613, Visitor João Álvares indicated
that a Jesuit’s first public exhortation would be on the “need for Christian
doctrine.” Lessons were to follow each day—a class for women and chil-
dren in the afternoon and another at night for men.33 Drawing on the
pedagogical techniques commonly used in Jesuit classrooms, missionaries
encouraged rural folk to learn prayers correctly. These schoolmasters had a
number of tricks up their sleeves, ranging from indulgences for assiduous
adults to sacred images and objects for children. During a 1624 mission to
Alcácer do Sal in southern Portugal, a Jesuit found the local children “very
lacking in the prayers and points of holy doctrine” but open to being “ani-
mated with the good prizes they were given.” Such was the case with a
young boy whose knowledge of doctrine improved from only the Pater-
noster and Ave Maria to a whole repertoire of prayers when he was prom-
ised a nomina and a rosary.34 Another technique was to organize proces-
sions of singing children, events meant to inculcate prayers as well as
drown out with pious refrains the bawdy ballads often heard in the streets
of early modern towns. For example, one Jesuit’s proudest accomplish-
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ment during a visit to a provincial Portuguese city in 1594 was the proces-
sion “for singing the Ave Maria or the litanies of Our Lady held every day
during Lent at dusk.”35 Naturally, the China Jesuits faced with the same
problem of inculcating doctrine drew on the Society’s store of teaching
strategies, including such standbys as composing Christian songs set to
popular tunes.36
Rural missionaries spent much time hearing confessions. In the Euro-
pean countryside, the visit of an itinerant priest was an opportunity for
men and women to make their confessions to someone from outside their
close-knit web of relations, unlike their parish priest. For the missionaries,
it was a chance to stimulate a desire for the sacrament of penance beyond
the yearly minimum of one confession. Moreover, confessions were an ef-
fective forum for moral suasion—though hardly a tool for any ambitious
project of “social disciplining.” To herd rustics into the confessional, one
needed both carrot and stick, or, in this case, indulgences and sermons.
After announcing the indulgences they carried with them, Jesuits were in-
structed to apprise the country folk of “the evils of mortal sin, from
whence arises the need for the remedy of confession.” They were to em-
phasize “doctrine, confessions, speaking of God, dealing with one’s neigh-
bor, and remedying their spiritual needs,” instead of delivering discourses
marked by “pomp and erudition.”37 Yet this injunction did not mean that
Jesuits were barred from using props such as paintings to stir the emotions
of their viewers and spur them to confess. One missionary told of how he
had related the Via Dolorosa to a rapt audience at Setúbal in 1650, un-
leashing a flood of “tears of devotion” as soon as he brandished panels
showing the Crucifixion.38 The China Jesuits, too, would have recourse to
such methods of increasing lay fervor, especially after they began to urge
their Christians to frequent reception of the sacraments in the 1630s. Eu-
ropean examples thus taught them how to meet the spiritual needs of ple-
beian Catholics, that is, how best to teach doctrine and elicit confessions.
Longing to Be Chinese
In 1615 the first editions of Nicolas Trigault’s De Christiana Expeditione
apud Sinas came off the presses at Augsburg. Within months at least one
copy made its way to the Colégio de Santo Antão in Lisbon, where Simão
da Cunha had a chance to read it. Cunha had been teaching in Lisbon for
almost six years by that point, following a path trodden by many a young
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Jesuit. Having shown enough natural intelligence to be admitted to the
Society as a scholastic, he had proceeded along the academic track in phi-
losophy and theology in Coimbra. Toward the end of his studies Cunha
went to the court city, where he taught humanities for five years, spent
one year as a substitute in philosophy, and passed some months as a
preacher. It was in the midst of this relatively unspectacular career that he
experienced an epiphany. Cunha was so moved by the tales of missionary
glory described in Trigault’s book that he requested to be sent to China.
After his petition was approved, Cunha joined the pan-European group of
Jesuits escorted by the inspirational author to Lisbon in the early months
of 1618. On April 18 that year, Trigault and his recruits set sail for India
aboard the São Carlos.39
Evidently, Simão da Cunha had the right inclination at the right time.
Only about a year passed between his decision to write an “Indies peti-
tion” and his departure for China. Other missionary hopefuls were not so
fortunate. Those who received patents to travel to India often lacked a
procurator to escort them to the mission field or arrived at Lisbon only to
find that the carracks had already set sail. Moreover, only a fraction of
those who applied were selected. Numerous young Jesuits spent years
writing letters to the Society’s Superiors General in the vain hope of being
sent overseas. The voluminous collection of letters preserved at the Soci-
ety’s central archives is a testament to the collective will of generations of
Jesuits to serve in the missions. But as the order’s superiors no doubt re-
peated constantly, multi sunt enim vocati pauci autem electi.
The selection process for recruits to the China mission remains an
enigma. Analyses of the Society’s administrative documents have yet to il-
luminate the steps involved. Nevertheless, the wealth of details found in
other sources makes it possible to elaborate an outline of the process, a se-
ries of common motivational factors, and a list of the personal qualities
considered necessary for prospective missionaries.
Selection for the missions was the fruit of individual initiative. When
Jesuits felt the desire to request assignments overseas, they addressed them-
selves to their local superiors. Since most (though not all) of the petition-
ers were scholastics or junior members of the order, this meant asking the
rectors of their colleges. One missionary hopeful explained how he had
spent seven years—from the first month he joined the Society—implor-
ing his superiors for the chance to write to Rome.40 Another scholastic
wrote that he had informed his rector at Coimbra every year for the three
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years he had been in the order of his “tears and sighs for China.”41 Some
did receive permission to try their luck with the Superior General. But au-
thorization to write to Rome was no guarantee of selection. In fact, as one
study of the indipetae from the Province of Flandro-Belgica for the years
1640 to 1660 has revealed, only eight out of ninety candidates (who to-
gether wrote over two hundred letters) were chosen.42 While the rate of se-
lection was higher for the Province of Portugal (accordingly, so was the
number of Portuguese Jesuits in the Vice-Province), only a fraction of its
total number of petitioners got a favorable response. Those who were cho-
sen received a patent freeing them from their obligations and instructing
them to go to Lisbon to await the departure of the India fleets.
What fueled the desires of so many missionary hopefuls? To start with,
tales of heroism overseas were constantly repeated in the novitiates and
colleges. Whether during their own readings or at mealtimes in the Soci-
ety’s refectories, Jesuits were continually presented with examples of mis-
sionary virtue for emulation. By far the most renowned name in the or-
der’s pantheon of the valiant was Francis Xavier, a figure who became
doubly important after his beatification in 1609 and canonization in 1622.
Many aspirants sought the same “very clear signs” of heaven’s will in their
own lives that Master Francis had seen in his.43 Certainly, more than a few
Jesuit readers of his many biographies dwelled on the passages that told
how God had chosen the Basque priest for the Indies missions. Even in
the 1580s, scarcely a generation after Xavier’s death, petitioners invoked
the “merits of the blessed Father Francisco” in their requests.44 After his
beatification, young Jesuits wrote of their desire to follow in his footsteps,
as well as of their prayers for his intercession with hard-hearted Superiors
General. One candidate explained how his “many desires to imitate Saint
Xavier” had even impelled him to change his surname to that of the Apos-
tle of the Orient.45 And on at least two occasions Xavier’s shade appeared
to Italian Jesuits in the throes of mortal illness. After the apparition re-
stored Alessandro Filippucci to health, the young man reciprocated by
taking his patron’s name, Francesco Saverio, and embarking for China. To
Marcello Mastrilli, who was to be martyred at Nagasaki in 1637, Xavier
was more direct. At a crucial moment, as Mastrilli was languishing on his
sickbed, suffering from a high fever, the saint pointedly asked, “Do you
want to die or go to India?”46
Beyond imitating Xavier, many petitioners aimed to outdo him. They
desired nothing short of martyrdom, a glorious death that the East Asian
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missions appeared to offer in spades after 1597. Tales of the bloody perse-
cutions in Japan, which began that year, gave rise to chimerical visions of
a fast track to sainthood. Passages from the Martyriologium Romanum
were standard fare at mealtimes, declaimed to Jesuits daily. Perhaps as a
natural consequence, the desire to “spill blood and give up life” for the
faith was expressed by scores of postulants.47 As the shadow of persecution
grew darker over Japan in the 1630s and 1640s, requests were still made—
and assignments given—for service in that country. Men such as Étienne
Faber, who left Goa in the late 1620s with the intention of penetrating the
Tokugawa realm disguised as a layman, or François Noël, who endeavored
to do the same in 1685, were fully aware of their potential fate. Others,
however, knew that the Society’s superiors were not likely to send many
men to certain death and so, in the 1640s, began to request permission to
“go to India and from there to pass to Japan, or if that is impossible, to
China.”48
Although the Vice-Province never harvested the crop of martyrs that
the Japan mission did, it benefited from the visions of glory associated
with East Asia. After all, the China mission was officially an appendage of
the Province of Japan. But the minds of young European Jesuits could
also accommodate an image of China that was responsible for sparking its
own missionary vocations. Annual Letters from the Vice-Province were
read aloud in refectories as they made their way from the mission field to
the Superior General’s desk.49 Moreover, at least one name from the China
mission was added to a manuscript catalogue of “Some Martyrs and Illus-
trious Men from the Society of Jesus” which was read in Jesuit colleges in
Portugal. Surprisingly, it was not Matteo Ricci but Étienne Faber, the tire-
less missionary from Avignon, who underwent “innumerable labors for
the span of twenty-seven years, converting a multitude of infidels to
Christ Our Lord.”50
The arrival of news from China in Europe invariably generated
indipetae. Just four years after Michele Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci had ar-
rived in Zhaoqing, one petitioner wrote of his desire to serve in the “spa-
cious field of China, where only recently the Society has begun the bat-
tle.”51 One of the first recruits to the mission, António de Almeida,
recalled wandering about the College of Coimbra saying, “Oh, how I long
to be Chinese!” He related his desire to “make great journeys for the love
of Christ” in order to transform the Ming empire from “a lake of abomi-
nations into a refreshing garden of virtues.”52 Over the course of the sev-
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View of the Jesuit College of Coimbra, Portugal. Lithograph, eighteenth century. The novitiate was located in the building on the right-hand
side, above some of the college’s classrooms.
[To view this image, refer to  
the print version of this title.] 
 
 
 


enteenth century, repeated publicity from the Vice-Province sparked more
petitions for China. As the memory of Japan faded, losing its sheen as the
dominant image of the Society in Asia, Jesuits began requesting to be sent
to the Qing domains. Indipetae from at least two postulants in the last
quarter of the seventeenth century made it clear that their authors did not
want to go to the “Indies” but only to China.53
To young Jesuits in Portugal, the presence of foreign confreres en route
to the missions was a constant reminder that men were needed overseas.
The Province of Portugal was responsible for organizing embarkation at
Lisbon for Jesuits from across Europe—or for giving them some form of
employment if they missed the customary late March departure of the In-
dia fleets. Matteo Ricci, for one, spent the ten months between June 1577
and March 1578 in Coimbra. Ricci’s colleagues Lazzaro Cattaneo and
Sabatino de Ursis also spent time at the Society’s residences in Portugal, as
did recruits to the China mission from the Southern Netherlands.54 For
instance, François de Rougemont and a Dutch colleague made it to Lis-
bon in April 1655, two weeks after the naus da Índia had set sail. The pair
were then sent to Coimbra to continue their theology studies while they
waited for passage east.55 Their fellow students could not fail to notice the
foreign presence in their midst. Naturally, they were stimulated by it, as
evidenced by a candidate who wrote to Rome from Coimbra in the hopes
of getting a patent of the kind issued to the “Italians staying in this col-
lege.”56
It fell to the Society’s senior officers to approve or deny the requests of
missionary hopefuls. It was unlikely, however, that the gusts of pathos
found in the petitions would suffice to sway Superiors General. They in-
stead consulted the personnel catalogues that were sent to Rome every
three years. Provincial officers produced these documents so that the Soci-
ety’s curia would have basic facts about every Jesuit: age, health, time
spent in the Society, academic background, and ministries performed.
Brief subjective evaluations were made according to five criteria: ingenu-
ity, judgment, prudence, practical experience, and academic proficiency.
Finally, the catalogues offered a psychological portrait of each member
(i.e., sanguine, melancholic, choleric, or phlegmatic) and a list of minis-
tries for which any one of them was presumed to have talent. Although
these notations were succinct, they contained enough information to ex-
clude the unfit. For example, second-year humanities student Manuel
Mendes was evaluated in 1675 as having a phlegmatic temperament and
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“good” ingenuity, judgment, and prudence. Two years after he had en-
tered the novitiate, however, his superiors were still uncertain about his
degree of fervor.57 Three years later they had a clearer picture. According
to the 1678 catalogue, the twenty-two-year-old Mendes had transformed
his temperament to sanguine and given proof of academic talent. These
changes clearly worked in his favor when he sent his petition to Rome.
Only two years later he received permission to embark for Asia.58
Still, it is unclear which criteria the Society’s superiors in Rome consid-
ered most important. Concerns over the rigors of the Cape route gave rise
to a preference for young men in good health. The fact that the order had
a school in Goa permitted the curia to grant patents to willing candidates
at the first sign of competence. But there were other factors as well. Na-
tional origin was important because Rome had to guarantee that the Vice-
Province, as part of the Portuguese Assistancy, had a large contingent of
Lusitanian Jesuits. Portuguese were therefore expedited to the Asian mis-
sions more swiftly than nationals of other countries. Despite the Society’s
self-image as a cosmopolitan organization, it was still affected by early
modern sentiments of national identity. As the crises over the French mis-
sion and the Tournon legation made clear, the vital links between crown,
empire, and mission demanded loyalty of the sort that was best en-
sured by common blood. Finally, academic proficiency played an impor-
tant role, because significant intellectual hurdles lay ahead for those who
reached China.
Although the selection process favored sending bright young Jesuits
to the missions, talented candidates did not always have their wishes
granted. A strong sense of institutional conservatism was found among
the Society’s provincial hierarchy, making them reluctant to release their
best preachers, teachers, and thinkers. The Province of Portugal, with de-
pendent mission fields in Brazil, India, and East Asia, was obliged to sup-
ply an average of fifteen candidates per year to other enterprises. While
this small number did not greatly reduce the overall tally of Portuguese Je-
suits—they averaged 650 in the seventeenth century—it did reduce their
total of recognizably talented men. Notions of good governance argued in
favor of keeping the best at home, and in 1603 the senior Jesuits resolved
“not to send fully educated men and others of particular expectations who
can perform greater service in Portugal than in the overseas provinces.”
Superior General Claudio Aquaviva subtly rebuked this resolution by not-
ing that the Province of Portugal had always shown “great charity to the
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In the Apostles’ Classroom F


overseas provinces . . . in giving them some men of higher consideration”
when the missions needed them.59 Nevertheless, the tension between the
Society’s local priorities and its global needs persisted.
The case of Rodrigo de Figueiredo is a good example of the centripetal
forces within the Society that worked to keep its best men in Europe. He
joined the order at the age of fourteen in Évora, the city where he had
been raised. After completing his novitiate and the humanities cycle,
Figueiredo went to study philosophy in Coimbra. According to António
de Gouvea, it was then that he began to show “as much talent among his
fellow students as piety and fervor among the devout.” Figueiredo was
known to spend five hours or more at a time on his knees praying. Even
so, he enjoyed a reputation for affability. As soon as he began to speak of
joining the Japan mission, his superiors attempted to dissuade him. In the
hope that his pleas were a passing fancy, they sent him to Italy in 1617 to
study theology at the Roman College. Figueiredo made the best of this sit-
uation, petitioning Superior General Aquaviva in person. No doubt it
helped his case that a procurator for the Province of Japan was in Rome at
the same time. In under a year, Figueiredo had secured permission to
set sail for Goa, leaving Europe in 1618 to complete his theology studies
in that city. On reaching India, he again encountered superiors eager to
benefit from his talents. Admiring his eloquence, they assigned him to
preach to the local Portuguese population, but Figueiredo’s heart was
in East Asia. It was only in 1622, after the Goa Jesuits abandoned their de-
signs, that he was able to journey onward to Macau. Frustrated in his de-
sire to continue on to Nagasaki, he entered the Ming empire. Japan’s loss
was China’s gain, wrote Gouvea, that country being “granted the great
fortune to receive such a missionary.”60
As this example suggests, the presence of a procurator could force the
curia’s hand. These individuals were charged with soliciting recruits and
often served as couriers of indipetae to Rome. Most important, procura-
tors sped up the selection process by issuing the Vice-Province’s perennial
call for manpower in person and escorting the chosen to Asia. To give but
a few examples, Nicolas Trigault left Lisbon in 1618 with twenty-two re-
cruits; Martino Martini sailed to India in the company of thirty-six mis-
sionary hopefuls; and Philippe Couplet started out from Portugal with fif-
teen companions. During his trip as procurator between 1636 and 1644,
Álvaro Semedo gathered petitions from candidates at the Portuguese and
Spanish colleges that he visited on his way to Rome. Among them was a
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letter from a philosophy student at Lisbon who wrote of waiting “with
longing eyes for the arrival of Father Semedo from China,” so that he
might accompany the procurator on his return trip.61 Another candidate
entrusted Semedo to give “a very full report” of his desires in Rome. The
procurator apparently relayed the necessary information, since this recruit
and forty others left Lisbon for Macau in 1643.62 As the seventeenth cen-
tury wore on, the task of soliciting men in northern Europe was left to
procurators. Prospective Portuguese missionaries were sought by an “In-
dies procurator” based in Lisbon who was responsible for sending men to
all of the Assistancy’s provinces. However efficient this system may have
been, it was not the same as having flesh-and-blood missionaries arrive
from the far side of the world—a fact proved by the dip in recruits from
Portugal for China between the 1660s and the 1690s.
Suffering the Voyage
In April 1628 Étienne Faber stepped aboard one of the three carracks an-
chored in Lisbon harbor waiting to set sail for India. The ships did not
leave Portugal until late that year, missing the winds necessary to propel
them into the South Atlantic. The heat and calm on the open sea were
oppressive, and many passengers soon succumbed. With the Grim Reaper
pacing the deck, the French Jesuit seized the chance to exercise Christian
charity. According to Gabriel de Magalhães, Faber circulated among the
sick, “serving them day and night, giving them medicine and food with
his own hands,” and begging those with greater stores of provisions for
alms. The future China Jesuit also performed priestly ministries, “animat-
ing them, consoling them with pious words, administering the sacraments
to them, and helping them die.” Apparently Faber was so active that his
superior had to curb his zeal lest he, too, fall sick. By the time the ships
made it back to Lisbon, the French Jesuit had gained renown for his char-
ity and sanctity. He would confirm this impression when he again em-
barked for India after some months in Évora, a span “which seemed to
him like a thousand years, so great were his desires to suffer.” The second
voyage went better than the first, giving Faber more opportunities to show
his zeal. Not only was he a “veteran soldier” on the 1629 Indies run, but
also he had no immediate superior “afraid of his falling ill and limiting his
work.”63
Faber was blessed with good health and zeal to match. Yet like many of
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his confreres, he walked the razor’s edge between life and death at sea. The
Society’s Asian enterprises saw more men die aboard ship than arrive at
their destinations. The seventeenth-century Jesuit chronicler of the over-
seas missions, Danielo Bartoli, described the numbers of unrealized voca-
tions that ended in burial at sea as “the annual tribute that the Society
pays to the ocean.”64 Neptune was brutally exacting on the China Jesuits.
One estimate of missionary wastage over the span from 1581 to 1712 sug-
gests that slightly over 50 percent died at sea.65 Even when they were ac-
companied by procurators, only a fraction of those bound for China ever
set foot in Macau. In fact, Bartoli wrote his comment in reference to five
of Nicolas Trigault’s twenty-two companions, who died over the course of
thirteen days in the equatorial Atlantic. Neither Martino Martini nor
Philippe Couplet had better luck: twelve of Martini’s thirty-six recruits
perished before reaching China, while eight of Couplet’s fifteen met a
similar fate.66 Such a continual drain on the Vice-Province’s recruitment
pool demanded some method for increasing the chances of missionary
survival. But despite the Jesuits’ best efforts, they had no luck at turning
the odds of their gamble with the sea in their favor.
While the death tolls of China-bound Jesuits were no doubt dramatic,
drama per se was often wholly absent on the Cape route or on the passage
to Macau. Rather, the slow creep of disease and the tedium of months
spent at sea were the hallmarks of the voyage. Even for men who were mo-
tivated by uncommon zeal, the proposition of spending almost a year in
cramped quarters under the shadow of death had little appeal. “Certainly
no one who was offered a house, even a regally appointed one, to live shut
inside for six months,” wrote Alessandro Valignano, “could stay detained
or locked in for so long; much less on a ship filled with so many different
kinds of inconveniences.”67
The Visitor was referring to the human spectacle that unfolded aboard
the naus da Índia, where a cross-section of colonial society was put to a
demanding test. The prospect of easy riches drew individuals to climb
aboard these vessels with little more than what they could carry. As weeks
at sea turned into months, they would eat through their meager provi-
sions and often lose their shirts gambling. The soldiers destined for India
were likewise a motley crew, many of them pressed into service by the
hand of justice and given to debauchery. As much could be said about the
sailors, more than a few of whom were picked up at ports in the Indian
Ocean and had little knowledge (if any) of Christianity. The Portuguese
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nobles who sailed in the service of the king were often no better than their
plebeian counterparts. Tensions rose among such individuals at the slight-
est provocation, unaccustomed as they were to cohabiting with their peers
or their betters, and discord was most readily resolved with the pistol or
the sword.68
Yet it was none other than Ignatius Loyola who first insisted that the
Society work in the world, not apart from it. And the world of the
Carreira da Índia was replete with opportunities for the Jesuits to exercise
their order’s basic ministries. For young men who were still engaged in
studies or had recently completed the academic track, the journey to India
was a chance to undergo the set of experiences prescribed for tertians, Je-
suits in their third year of probation. From stem to stern of each carrack
lay numerous occasions for preaching, teaching doctrine, caring for the
sick, hearing confessions, performing humble chores, and begging for
alms. A further similarity to tertianship lay in the fact that traveling Jesuits
were barred from studying. If the China-bound missionaries’ labors at sea
were not a formal tertianship, they were certainly an intensive training
course in how to be members of the Society of Jesus. Moreover, by per-
forming these types of duties between Lisbon and Macau, the Vice-Prov-
ince’s recruits gained skills in their order’s standard methods of pastoral
care. After all, many of them embarked with little or no experience as
priests. Those who sailed prior to ordination gained by observing their
confreres and working under the supervision of older Jesuits. Aboard ship
they often had their first chance to act on the zeal that had driven them to
“petition for the Indies,” permitting them to confront many of the com-
monplace chores and challenges of missionary life.
Which ministries did Jesuits perform? One description of a typical
three-month voyage from Goa to Macau gives some clues. On May 15,
1686, two priests and a coadjutor embarked on the Nossa Senhora do
Rosário bound for the China coast. Despite suffering from recurrent fe-
vers, the younger of the two priests “did not cease carrying out the minis-
tries of the Society for his neighbors.” Every day he said mass on deck,
“and it pleased God that the winds, rains, and rocking of the ship should
never interrupt him.” Except when he was too ill, he sang the litanies of
the Virgin in the afternoon and made spiritual exhortations to his fellow
passengers. But according to his companion, his most laudable service was
to gather the sailors and African slaves every night, sing doctrine songs
with them, and explain the basic prayers. In spite of his weakness, this
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priest “exercised his great charity with the sick and needy, in their souls as
in their bodies.” Every morning he awoke early and stationed himself
amidships, where, “in a loud and devout voice, he exhorted all to praise
God and the Most Holy Virgin.”69
But this was no typical recruit to the China mission. It was Francisco
Nogueira, a veteran of thirty-seven years on the India missions. His col-
leagues were Simão Martins, the sixty-seven-year-old former provincial of-
ficer of the Province of Goa and Visitor-designate, and Brother Luís Pires,
a Macanese youth fresh from the novitiate. This trio knew what to do on
a ship and had long experience in dealing with the Portuguese and other
individuals who by choice or by force had become part of the Estado da
Índia. They maintained prayer routines, said daily masses, taught doctrine
to the uneducated, sought to reform their neighbors’ habits with spiritual
sayings, and tended to the sick and the dying. But what of the future
China Jesuits who often left Europe straight from the Society’s novi-
tiates or colleges? How did they learn the best way to channel their ener-
gies at sea?
Two sets of rules were written in the early seventeenth century for regu-
lating Jesuit life on the ships that plied the Cape route. One was elabo-
rated by Visitor João Álvares after his 1610–1613 inspection of the Province
of Portugal and the other by Francisco Vieira, Visitor of the Province of
Japan, in conjunction with the Provincials of the Goa and Malabar Prov-
inces, in 1616.70 The two documents drew on the collected experience of
senior Jesuits in Asia and laid down a structure of shipboard duties for
priests, scholastics, and coadjutors. Their authors intended the rules to be
read aloud at several points during the voyage, so that all would be kept
aware of the order’s expectations. Traveling Jesuits of different ranks were
to be apprised of the ministries to be performed and taught how best to
handle the trying atmosphere on board the carracks. Both sets of rules
contain a mixture of exhortations to Christian charity and warnings about
the multifarious snares of the devil.
According to Vieira, Jesuits had three obligations at sea. The first was
praying in order to be able “to suffer the voyage with all diligence.” The
second was guarding their health so that they could be “employed in the
missions in India and the salvation of souls.” After taking care of these
two priorities, they were to fulfill their third obligation, to help their fel-
low passengers in corporal and spiritual matters. Such, Vieira wrote, “was
expected of us, and was what our predecessors always did on these voy-
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ages.”71 By invoking the examples of their forebears, Vieira issued a chal-
lenge to the young men who had petitioned for a chance to imitate Fran-
cis Xavier. Here was a golden opportunity for them to step into the shoes
of the Apostle of the Orient. But perhaps this set the bar a bit too high.
After all, Xavier had done nothing less than calm raging tempests and
turn the salty sea into freshwater.
Jesuits typically embarked at Lisbon in groups of ten or twelve. Their
ranks were normally composed one-third of priests and two-thirds of
scholastics and coadjutors.72 One of the priests was appointed superior
and accorded the same powers as a college rector or residential superior.
Francisco Vieira recommended selecting a good-natured Jesuit for this
post, one who would not “make the voyage any more of a burden for his
companions.”73 The superior was responsible for organizing his subordi-
nates’ routines, assigning chores, serving as the common confessor, and
representing the Jesuits in their dealings with the ship’s officers. Above all,
the appointed leader was entrusted with maintaining a semblance of har-
mony among the future missionaries. Both Álvares and Vieira enjoined
the superiors to defuse any brewing conflicts since, as the former wrote,
“besides turning charity and fraternal unity lukewarm, it could cause
scandal on the ship if others found out.”74 Vieira underscored this point
by insisting that all of the Jesuits’ discussions below decks should be re-
stricted to topics which, “if seculars heard, they could be edified, and in
no way think there was any immodest bickering or even the shadow of
discord.” Unfortunately for those scholastics used to the leisure activities
of the Society’s colleges, this rule also forbade their cherished academic
disputations.75
A rotating system of duties was to be established among each group.
Vieira suggested switching tasks each month, with those who were or-
dained alternating between preaching and hearing confessions. For scho-
lastics and coadjutors, he enumerated five basic chores: supervising provi-
sions, preparing meals, nursing sick Jesuits, nursing laymen, and acting as
a supplementary nurse.76 For those recruits who were fluent in Portu-
guese, there was also the task of teaching doctrine to the sailors. In 1583,
for instance, João Rodrigues Girão (ca. 1562–1629) was alone among his
Flemish, Italian, and Spanish confreres in his capacity to speak to the sea-
men in their native tongue.77
The Jesuits’ spiritual ministries among the crew and passengers were, as
both Visitors noted, an effective way of “winning souls for God and many
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friends for the Society.” Along with any other priests or brothers who were
present, the Jesuits organized religious life on board. In the afternoon they
would gather on deck to chant the litanies of the saints, inviting all to sing
along. On Saturdays and feast days they would make a more solemn show
of intoning the litanies of the Virgin. Individual Jesuits would say masses
for small groups regularly, reserving larger masses for major feast days.
On a typical March-to-September journey from Lisbon to Goa, these
holy days included Easter, Pentecost, the Annunciation, the Holy Trin-
ity, Corpus Christi, Ascension, Assumption, and the Nativity of the Vir-
gin. Vieira recommended that all Jesuits on board devote the days prior
to these feasts to exhorting all passengers to confess. The essential task
throughout was raising the tenor of piety on board the ship. The Jesuits
contributed to it by teaching doctrine, praying and explaining the rosary,
reading devotional books aloud, and instructing others how to make ex-
aminations of conscience.78
While their shipmates may have viewed the Jesuits’ pious practices as
an imposition most of the time, their ministries were in high demand
whenever the seas stirred. In the rough waters near the Cape of Good
Hope, where the South Atlantic meets the Indian Ocean, Jesuits were fre-
quently employed in the attempt to calm anxieties (including their own)
by praying aloud for safe passage. A common practice was to say prayers
or masses containing invocations of the saints who had given their names
to the ships: São Luís, Santa Ana, Bom Jesus do Carmo, Chagas, Relíquias,
Nossa Senhora de Atalaia. During João Rodrigues Girão’s 1583 trip, the Je-
suits held a procession on the feast of Saint James since the ship was called
the Santiago. The festivities included a mass and artillery salvos that con-
tributed to make “everyone happy.”79 Anxious passengers called on the
missionaries to lead processions about the ships’ decks in times of danger,
such as when the winds died down or when the vessels drifted too close to
shore. One account remarks that the Jesuits were accustomed on these oc-
casions to turning to “divine remedies, directing frequent prayers to God,
to the Virgin most holy, and to all of the saints of heaven, invoking daily
the name of every one.”80 When mortal danger threatened, the religious
pitch on board trebled. Confessions were heard, relics were carried about,
and the saints were implored to calm the wind and waves. One China
missionary who sailed in 1629 reported hearing many confessions after he
and his colleagues attempted in vain to calm a storm by suspending relics
over the towering waves.81
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These displays of piety were aimed at garnering moral authority for the
Jesuits and minting the coin of concord, following João Álvares’s injunc-
tion to “take great care to keep the ship at peace.” In most cases the role of
peacemaker fell to senior members of the Society. While other Jesuits
might intervene in fights between soldiers and sailors, the superior was to
mind the relations among nobles as well as among the ship’s officers.82 As
both Visitors observed, dissension between captains (typically noblemen
with little knowledge of navigation) and pilots (technical specialists re-
sponsible for sailing the vessel) could be fatal. It was crucial, Vieira noted,
to make all officers agree on how best to bring the ship to port without
appearing “biased or partial toward anyone.”83
Perhaps the most common Jesuit ministry on board ship was nursing
the sick. After overcoming the initial bouts of nausea experienced by
many first-time travelers—an affliction that one observer lauded, since it
“liberated you from the sad memory of home and the fear of the dangers
ahead”—many experienced feverish delirium and the agony of rotting
gums, legs, and arms brought on by scurvy.84 While the Jesuits typically
carried sufficient and varied provisions, which made their diet healthier
than that of their fellow passengers, they were not impervious to disease.
For instance, one Jesuit recorded in 1681 that only five out of 312 passen-
gers aboard one of the Indiamen did not fall ill. During that trip, the mis-
sionaries “had the continual experience of the zeal and charity that carried
them to India.” But such virtues did not grant them immunity. Of nine-
teen Jesuits, only two escaped the disease that took the lives of four of
their confreres (two of whom were slated for the Vice-Province).85
Attending to the afflicted was as much a spiritual endeavor as it was a
medical one. The Jesuits’ first duty was to ensure that all those who fell ill
confessed their sins. For safety’s sake, Vieira insisted that the priests who
knelt to hear these confessions turn their heads so as not to “imbibe
the breath” of their penitents.86 The second priority was to organize an
infirmary and ask the ship’s master to assign cabin boys to keep it clean.
One or two Jesuits were to be appointed to visit all of the sick twice each
day with the ship’s “doctor, surgeon, or barber” to indicate the treatment
for each patient.87 Besides serving as bedside attendants, missionaries were
to make sure that the sick received the stocks of food and medicine
known as the King’s Provision. While laymen often dispensed these sup-
plies, at times Jesuits were given this hazardous assignment. Agostino
Tudeschini (1598–1643) discovered its myriad difficulties in 1629, when
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In the Apostles’ Classroom F


sick men were prepared to use force against him to lay their hands on the
King’s Provision.88
The account so far may have given the impression that traveling Jesuits
were continually engaged in some form of piety or charity. Not so. Much
of their time was spent seeking diversion from the crushing tedium of the
voyage. Out of fear that too much otium might drain away one’s zeal, it
was suggested that there be daily readings from devotional books, the Bi-
ble, and the Martyriologium Romanum. Other leisure activities were en-
couraged, provided they “served as recreation and entertainment without
giving offense to God.” João Álvares suggested that Jesuits go up on deck
early in the morning and remain there all day, because in addition to “alle-
viating the head and taking fresh air, it serves as a distraction for the sol-
diers and passengers.” He also recommended that they read stories to their
shipmates, and even permitted them to gamble. Playing cards or dice was,
as Álvares noted, “a way of avoiding other evils,” by which missionaries
could intervene to prevent others from “swearing, fights, and the loss of
considerable sums of money.”89
Recall, however, that Jesuits fresh from school were barred from their
favorite pastime, studying. In light of the chronic lack of manpower in the
China mission, why did the Society forgo the opportunity to expedite the
training of its members at sea? After all, there was no shortage of instruc-
tors among the senior Jesuits who sailed with almost every fleet. Health
concerns dictated this policy. Francisco Vieira and others who had trav-
eled on the Carreira da Índia were convinced that the stagnant air in cab-
ins below deck was lethal. Knowing that young Jesuits might envision
their quarters as classrooms, he prohibited his subordinates from be-
ginning philosophy or theology studies or reading “books by saints or
preachers and taking notes or writing.” His reasons were simple: “In this
way we have buried many of our men on these voyages, and even on the
mission this past year, 1615, two or three died because they purposely re-
mained in the cabins to study.” Vieira conceded one exception to his rule:
those preparing sermons to present to the crew and passengers.90 In spite
of these injunctions, other sources reveal that some procurators such as
Nicolas Trigault and Martino Martini taught Chinese and astronomy to
their recruits—safely topside, though, far from the pestilent air below.
The majority of the missionaries reached the China coast after roughly
a year at sea. When conditions were right, Jesuits would spend little time
waiting in India for the monsoon winds to carry them across Maritime
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Asia. But not all were so fortunate. Manuel Dias the elder, for instance,
left Lisbon in 1585 on the ill-fated Santiago. He was among a handful of
survivors who managed to reach the East African coast in an overloaded
skiff after their ship foundered on shoals. They had no better luck on land
than at sea. Native raiding parties stripped them of their clothing and
goods for bartering, and they were forced to walk for over two months to
reach the closest Portuguese settlement.91 Agostino Tudeschini also experi-
enced the trial of shipwreck on his way to China in 1629.92 Others found
the wait at Goa too much for them to bear and set off for Macau on their
own. This was the case of Martino Martini, who walked in 1642 from Goa
to Surat, where he found passage to Java aboard an English vessel. News
of the acclamation of King João IV had already reached Asia, loosening
the tensions between the Portuguese and the Dutch, permitting Martini
to sail directly from Java to Macau.93 François de Rougemont, Philippe
Couplet, and a third colleague chose a similar route after reaching Goa in
1656. This trio walked across India as well, but they did Martini one
better: they went barefoot.94
On January 29, 1659, André Ferrão (ca. 1625–1661) signed his name to the
Annual Letter of the Vice-Province of China for 1656. This priest, who
was born at Seia on the northern slope of the Serra da Estrela in central
Portugal and educated at the College of Coimbra, had sailed from Lisbon
aboard the Bom Jesus de Vidigueira with Martino Martini in April 1657.
He spent six months traveling the Cape route, another half year in resi-
dence at the Colégio de São Paulo in Goa, and a further three months
sailing to Macau. Ferrão arrived on the China coast on July 14, 1658, and
whiled away six months before he was given the task of compressing a pile
of three-year-old reports from the Vice-Province into an Annual Letter.
He took inspiration in copying the “glorious labors” of his colleagues in-
side the Qing empire, but felt that he would do them justice only if he re-
lated the trials that he had gone through to reach China. Ferrão waxed po-
etic about the “fruit of tears” reaped across the nautical miles between
Lisbon and Macau. These tears had been shed for all the companions who
had been left behind “on these long routes and vast seas.” Ferrão had
parted company with no fewer than twelve confreres. “But they were not
all dead,” he was pleased to report; only four had died, while three re-
mained in Goa to study theology, and another five were either in India or
Macassar “tied down by Galen.”95
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In the Apostles’ Classroom F


So many tears had he spilled, Ferrão averred, that they were enough to
feed another fountain like that famous one in Coimbra, the Fonte das
Lágrimas. But, he added, he was not speaking of the tears that each China
Jesuit cried for himself, since “being a missionary is not the same as being
insensitive.” So many diseases and so much misery accompanied the men
of the Vice-Province on their way from Europe to East Asia! Moreover,
Ferrão noted, those who traveled on the sea were desiccated by the con-
stant winds and salty waves. “So undone and so worn down do we arrive,”
the missionary wrote about himself and others like him, “that he speaks
the truth who calls us relics, not only of the China mission, but of our-
selves.”96 It is hard to imagine that such a description would have seemed
fitting for an Annual Letter, an account of apostolic labors intended to
kindle the vocations of future missionaries. Nevertheless, Ferrão chose to
be honest. These were the trials that one had to undergo just to have the
opportunity to preach the gospel to the Chinese. But as any veteran of the
China enterprise could have said, the journey east was just the beginning.
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7
Learning the Language of Birds
T
here was no doubt about it, wrote Juan Antonio de
Arnedo in the early 1690s. The China enterprise stood out among all of
the Jesuits’ missions as the one in which erudition and conversion were
most intimately linked. The study not just of Western arts and letters but
also of indigenous philosophy was indispensable to missionaries working
in China, where “books and the preaching of the gospel” were closely in-
tertwined. How could it be otherwise, Arnedo asked, in a land where
scholarship reached “the heights of the most learned European nation?”
The Jesuits therefore must commit themselves to studying Chinese lan-
guage and thought.1
The missionaries’ advances of the preceding century, Arnedo claimed,
had revealed the value of their engagement with Chinese intellectual tra-
ditions. But how did they gain their entry into the world of indigenous
erudition? In other words, how did the Jesuits turn themselves into ac-
ceptable interlocutors for late Ming and early Qing literati—those men
who stood before the imposing gates of social legitimacy in China? The
answer to these questions had been obvious to the men of the Society of
Jesus for decades. As João Rodrigues wrote in 1624, the double task of
studying Chinese language and thought was hard work. On this score, he
claimed, Saint Paul had had it easier than the East Asian Jesuits; after all,
the Jesuits were not blessed with a heaven-sent gift of tongues. Rodrigues,
the author of the first Western grammars of Japanese, knew something
about language study. He understood the predicament faced by the Jesuits


who arrived on the China coast worn out by traveling and years of previ-
ous schooling but had no choice other than to submit themselves to an-
other course of study “in the manner of children.” In addition to learning
tongues that were “so confusing and so different from their own,” they
were obliged to gain familiarity with “the errors of the various ancient
sects” found in Asia. If the missionaries did not become well versed in the
“symbols and enigmas that constitute the religion and rites of these Asian
nations,” first passing through the door of language, they could expect no
success in their apostolic endeavors.2
By the time Rodrigues made this assessment, Jesuits had been engaged
in learning Chinese for almost half a century. Beginning with Michele
Ruggieri and Matteo Ricci, the missionaries in China had immersed
themselves so fully in the language of their hosts that they had gained po-
sitions of respect among the erudite elite of the Ming empire. The Jesuits
made a strategic decision to focus on learning guanhua, the parlance of li-
terati and mandarins. They relied on the techniques of grammatical anal-
ysis often used for teaching Latin and Greek in their order’s schools so as
to understand the syntax of Chinese. Once equipped with an ability to
speak and read, they attempted to mimic the basic intellectual formation
of their hosts by studying the canonical texts of Confucian thought, that
is, Rujiao, or the “Teachings of the Literati.”
The entry of the Jesuits into the world of Chinese scholarship, sought
for the express purpose of finding ammunition for their rhetorical salvos
in the battle for souls, produced impressive results. Matteo Ricci became a
celebrity in person and in print for his learning, and his shadow loomed
over the China enterprise for over a century. But it was not enough for his
successors to coast in the wake of their confrere’s accomplishments. They
had to assume Ricci’s mantle of erudition if they were to spread the mis-
sion beyond the areas where he was known. Consequently, their primary
challenge was to devise a system for transmitting the mission’s collective
knowledge of indigenous language and thought to each newly arrived
priest. Such a training program in spoken Mandarin and Chinese philoso-
phy—especially the aspects of Confucian thought deemed most germane
to the Christian message—would permit new Jesuits to build friendships,
secure patronage, and gain converts among the great and the good. Be-
cause their enterprise was predicated on high social visibility, and because
their public image was modeled on that of the elite, this immersion in li-
terati culture was indispensable for the mission’s survival and progress.
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The slow pace of conversions in the first fifty years of the mission gave
the China Jesuits ample time to consider the best way to pass on their
knowledge of indigenous language and thought to those who arrived
from Europe. By the early 1620s they had already devised the first Western
program of Chinese studies, a fusion of traditional Chinese educational
methods and Jesuit organizational techniques. This program attempted to
equip recruits with the essential tools for their proselytizing activities, and
the degree to which the Vice-Province was able to continue it would have
a decisive impact on the mission’s outcome. In fact, over the course of the
seventeenth century, the Jesuits’ language skills enabled them to make
conversions far in excess of their pastoral capacities. As a result, the train-
ing that had made the missionaries so successful was gradually sacrificed
as the Vice-Province found itself forced to get new recruits out into the
mission field as quickly as possible. The daunting pastoral burdens of
those missionaries thus robbed them of the opportunity to devote their
first years in China to the study of Confucian thought. There is a certain
irony here, because this was a time when the Jesuits were increasingly
forced by other Europeans to defend their (allegedly undue) appreciation
of native customs. So the fate of the Vice-Province was truly determined
by the depth of its members’ engagement with the Chinese language—a
tongue whose short syllables appeared to make it, according to one of
them, “more the language of birds than of men.”3
The Secret of the Language
The Jesuit mission to China began at a language barrier. The efforts of
Francis Xavier and his immediate successors to find a way into
Guangdong Province in the second half of the sixteenth century foun-
dered as a result of their inability to enter into a conversation with the lo-
cal authorities. After nearly three decades of frustration—a feeling that
rankled the men of the Society, in view of the inroads they had made in
India, Japan, and Southeast Asia—they reached a solution in 1579, when
Visitor Alessandro Valignano summoned Michele Ruggieri to Macau.
Valignano left orders for his compatriot to dedicate his time to language
study, trusting that if a Jesuit could speak for himself at Canton, he might
obtain permission to reside within the empire. With knowledge of spoken
and written Chinese, Ruggieri could dismiss the interpreters typically em-
ployed by the Portuguese traders as well as by his missionary forebears.
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Learning the Language of Birds F


This expedient, first used by Xavier himself, had created no small degree
of ambiguity and misunderstanding.
Beyond putting Ruggieri in a position to commence the diplomatic
overtures that laid the foundations for the China mission, Valignano’s or-
ders sought to enhance the status of the Society of Jesus within Macau.
Although the Portuguese had been able to establish and maintain their
settlement without the help of Jesuit go-betweens, the city’s fortunes were
bolstered at various moments during the seventeenth century as a result of
the missionaries’ interventions on its behalf in Canton and Peking. As
soon as Ruggieri began to be noticed at the Guangdong emporium by li-
terati for his language abilities, the Portuguese merchants were quick to
make a public show of their friendship with him. These encounters at
Canton were proof enough that Valignano’s investment would pay off.
Curiously, his orders had the effect of cooling the initial zeal of his subor-
dinates, some of whom were taken aback by his insistence on a regime of
language studies that would precede proselytizing activities. Nevertheless,
by 1587, Superior General Claudio Aquaviva confirmed the policy, order-
ing that “as many missionaries study language as can.”4
For the first years of his stay in southern China, Ruggieri was left to
learn Chinese on his own. As he wrote to his superiors in Rome in 1581, he
set to work diligently but soon realized the enormity of the task before
him. Ruggieri complained that the Chinese characters were unlike the let-
ters used in Europe “and those of all other nations,” and that in fact there
was no alphabet, “but as many letters as there are words.” Confronted
with this daunting plenitude, he inquired into how the Chinese them-
selves learned to read. Doubtless his spirits were not lifted when he
learned that “even the natives spent fifteen years of their lives” in order to
be able to tackle written texts.5 A further difficulty was that he had
been ordered to study “the Chinese language of the court”—that is, the
Nanjing area form known to the Portuguese traders as Mandarin—but
could find no one at Macau who knew both that tongue and Portuguese.
So Ruggieri had to begin his studies in what he called a “ridiculous”
manner. The priest found a Chinese master who helped him struggle
through a few schoolbooks. He also learned from his teacher through pic-
tures. “For example, when he wanted to teach me how to say and write
‘horse’ in that language, he drew a horse and above it drew the character
that signifies horse and is pronounced ‘ma.’” According to a letter that
Ruggieri sent the Superior General, the local Jesuits and the Portuguese
246
E building the church


merchants who heard of his study method thought it impossible that he
would learn anything.6 After these initial lessons in Macau, he consulted
with Valignano, who suggested that he might find more favorable condi-
tions for studying Mandarin at Canton. It was in that city that Ruggieri
began to study Chinese books in earnest, making his first translations
from Chinese into Latin and trying his hand at composing Christian texts
in Chinese. Within two years, he claimed in November 1581, divine favor
had granted him the ability to memorize fifteen thousand characters,
enough to advance “little by little” in reading indigenous writings.7 A little
over a year later, in February 1583, Ruggieri reported that he had started
acting on Valignano’s desire that he write “a catechism, a flos sanctorum, a
confessional manual, and a doctrine manual”—although it appears that
he produced only a catechism and a set of prayers before beginning to
work on a mappa mundi.8
To be sure, Ruggieri was the only Jesuit who had to learn Chinese in
such a painful manner. When Matteo Ricci and Francesco Pasio arrived at
Macau in 1582 to join the mission, they benefited from their colleague’s
experience; they had someone to explain basic grammar and vocabulary to
them. They spent little time at Macau, moving quickly to Zhaoqing,
where Ruggieri had gained permission to reside for the purpose of lan-
guage study. Doubtless, Ricci’s initial bewilderment on finding out that
Chinese had “neither articles, nor cases, nor numbers, nor genders, nor
tenses, nor modes” was allayed through his compatriot’s explanations.9
But even if Ruggieri imparted what he knew of Chinese grammar in a
short time, an immense problem remained—the need to memorize char-
acters. Between 1583 and 1588 Ruggieri and Ricci did their best to alleviate
that problem by compiling a dictionary of Portuguese words, Chinese
characters, and their romanizations. This lexicon represents the Jesuits’
first systematic attempt to make the Chinese language a common resource
for the mission with the provision of a European-style teaching tool for
recruits as well as veteran priests.10
Perhaps more important than the Jesuits’ vocabulary list, however, was
their appropriation of indigenous study methods. Ruggieri’s comment
that Chinese children spent over a decade (in another letter he states “be-
tween fifteen and twenty years”) learning to read suggests that an analysis
of native methods was part of his inquiries into how best to study.11 Evi-
dence preserved in the Roman Archives of the Society of Jesus shows that
some of the first missionaries employed the same texts that Chinese chil-
247
Learning the Language of Birds F


[To view this image, refer to  
the print version of this title.] 
 
 
 


dren learned by rote to increase their vocabulary and practice writing
characters. An example of the language primer Qianzi wen (Thousand
Character Classic), printed in Fujian Province in 1579, has survived with
romanizations and Latin translations written in the margins around each
character.12 Given the importance of that coastal province, which had
strong trading ties to the Pearl River delta and was a center of printing ac-
tivity, it is likely that this volume is one purchased by either Ricci or
Ruggieri. In any event, it is clear that the Jesuits from early on relied
on elements of the native educational canon for learning the language.
Moreover, by December 1584 the missionaries at Zhaoqing had invited a
Chinese master to board with them, give them daily lessons, and edit
Ruggieri’s writings.13 By adopting indigenous study techniques, the mis-
sionaries gained a twofold benefit: they saved themselves the trouble of in-
novation, that is, of newly creating an entire course of study in matters
unknown to them; and they gained an awareness of the modes of thought
and cultural references inherent in Chinese educational traditions.
Despite the reports of smooth sailing sent by Ruggieri and his col-
leagues to their superiors in Macau and in Rome, and even if they did
manage to memorize scores of characters, there remained a massive stum-
bling block in the way of their acquisition of Chinese. This obstacle was
the tonal nature of the spoken language. Within the first few months of
his stay at Macau, Matteo Ricci complained to a fellow Jesuit in Italy that
the language was “so equivocal, having many words that mean more than
a thousand things.” He knew that the difference between homonyms was
a matter of their being pronounced “with the voice higher or lower in four
variations of tone,” but his celebrated memory did not help him in this
regard; he was hampered by a tin ear.14 According to later accounts, it was
not until Lazzaro Cattaneo began to study with Ricci at Shaozhou in 1594
that the Jesuits devised a system for identifying the different tones em-
ployed in guanhua and romanizing them consistently.
Ricci later recorded that his Sicilian confrere made this discovery on the
basis of “the music that he knew” and was enabled accordingly to create
249
Learning the Language of Birds F
Annotated folio from Qianzi wen, the Thousand Character Classic (Fujian, 1579). The
romanizations and translations surrounding each character were likely done by
Matteo Ricci or one of the other early Jesuits.


a system of accentuation for transcribing Chinese terms that markedly
improved the missionaries’ learning curve.15 By the time of his death,
Cattaneo was celebrated as having unearthed the “secret of the language.”
Before they grasped the crucial tonal element, the missionaries often erred
in speaking, “since the same word, merely by varying the accents on the
syllables and applying one or another tone, could have four, five, or at
times more meanings.”16 Once the characters were organized according to
sound, the Jesuits found their vocabularies expanding more rapidly. In
1607, describing his lessons with Ricci in a letter, Sabatino de Ursis went
so far as to claim, “The challenge posed by these characters and the lan-
guage is not as great as I had imagined, since all of the difficulty is found
in the variety of tones.” He asserted that thanks to the efforts of his breth-
ren, learning Chinese was “easy, because by learning a single syllable, one
learns fifty or more entirely different things.” Ursis even provided his cor-
respondent with an example of the variety of characters and meanings for
the syllable “pa,” complete with a diagram of musical notes for pronounc-
ing each variation.17 So important was the mastery of tones to the acquisi-
tion of Chinese that later superiors insisted that recruits to the mission
bring with them “some fundaments of music for learning the Chinese
tones perfectly.”18
“An Extraordinary Diligence”
During their first decade in the Ming empire, the Jesuits pursued the
study of Chinese in an ad hoc manner, with a senior priest (typically
Matteo Ricci) instructing new arrivals or scheduling lessons with native
masters. But in the late 1590s Ricci left his colleagues behind as he headed
north to Peking. This forced the missionaries to develop other methods of
passing on their knowledge to new arrivals in what was hoped to be a uni-
form fashion. A decade of experience had convinced Ricci that recruits
needed to acquire a familiarity with spoken Mandarin, written Chinese,
and the basic works of the Confucian canon. A trained Jesuit was neces-
sary only for helping new men clear the initial hurdle of speaking. After
that, they could rely on hired masters who would teach them writing and
guide them through the Four Books.
Two significant problems had to be resolved: Which missionaries
would do the initial teaching? And where would they do it? In the early
1590s the answers to these questions seemed clear. The College of Macau
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was spacious enough to accommodate temporarily missionaries heading
for Guangdong Province, as well as those bound for Nagasaki. Moreover,
part of the stated purpose of the Colégio de Madre de Deus was to provi-
sion the East Asian enterprises by teaching “the languages and customs of
these kingdoms.” Such training would ensure that they departed for Japan
or China as men ready for service and not as “greenhorn Portuguese,”
noted Duarte de Sande, the institution’s first rector.19 Indeed, he himself
had taken up the task of instructing two of his compatriots, João Soeiro
and João da Rocha, while they completed their theology studies. Sande
“knew something of the Chinese language” from his days in Zhaoqing, so
he was qualified to teach its rudiments.20 Nevertheless, Soeiro and da
Rocha would have to wait until they entered the Ming empire before they
began to study Chinese composition and philosophy.
A number of factors converged to make the Jesuits abandon the idea of
using the College of Macau for language training. First of all, the dif-
ficulties involved in smuggling men into the empire meant that new mis-
sionaries had to be sent as soon as an opportunity presented itself, not
necessarily after they were grounded in Chinese. Moreover, once inside
the empire, trained priests had few opportunities to return to Macau to
teach their colleagues. The cloud of mandarin suspicion that fell over the
colony from the 1590s until the 1610s as a result of its links with Japan
only served to encourage the China Jesuits to dissociate themselves from
Macau. By the time Ming authorities shifted their attention from the Por-
tuguese to the Manchus, relations between the China mission and the
Province of Japan had soured. After 1614 the College of Macau became
the Japan Jesuits’ headquarters in exile and was packed full with distrust-
ful and despondent priests. Finally, the creation of the Vice-Province in
1619 and the end of the Nanjing affair in 1623 led the China Jesuits to
move their teaching program away from the Portuguese colony and into
the Ming empire for good.
Macau did furnish the China mission with an invaluable resource
during the 1590s, however—its sons, the children of either Asian or mixed
parentage who had been raised as Christians among the Portuguese-
speaking segment of its inhabitants. Borrowing a technique from the Ja-
pan Jesuits, who had since the early 1580s been accepting Japanese men
into their ranks as coadjutors charged with teaching their European con-
freres, Alessandro Valignano assigned two youths, Francisco Martins and
Sebastião Fernandes, to Matteo Ricci, who began the task of training
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Learning the Language of Birds F


them in 1591 at Shaozhou. After almost two years of study, the pair were
reported to have a “mediocre knowledge of the Chinese language and let-
ters.”21 The initial progress of these native coadjutors encouraged Ricci to
accept a few other “sons of Macau” during the following two decades and
subject them to a language training program of their own. Yet because of
the small size of the mission, the China Jesuits enlisted the services of only
a handful of them, despite Ricci’s contention that the colonial upbringing
of these Chinese coadjutors made them far more trustworthy and secure
in their faith than their Japanese peers who had been “born amid hea-
thens.”22
There is little evidence regarding the curriculum followed by Jesuit stu-
dents of Chinese in the mission’s first decades, the period before the
Nanjing affair in 1616. A 1598 letter written by Niccolò Longobardo at
Shaozhou suggests that the program consisted of two phases, the first fo-
cused on speaking and the second dedicated to studying the Four Books.
After his arrival in late December of the previous year, the Sicilian priest
had begun to hear lessons from what he called “speech books,” texts
meant to prepare one for learning composition. Two Macanese coadju-
tors, António Leitão (ca. 1581–1611) and Domingos Mendes (1582–1652),
joined Longobardo in his studies, while Lazzaro Cattaneo and Francisco
Martins began a course of study on the “Quin”—that is, Jing, the classics
of the Chinese tradition.23
This course of study appears to have been repeated in later years, but
instead of studying at Shaozhou, the Jesuits ran more of their training
classes at Nanjing or Peking. In March 1605 Alfonso Vagnone wrote from
the southern capital that he was busily engaged in his studies alongside
two other recent arrivals, Feliciano da Silva and Pedro Ribeiro. In an ex-
cerpt from a letter to his superiors in Rome, Vagnone expressed his frus-
tration at not being able to acquire the language faster: “In this house,
there is only one priest and a native brother who know the language, as
well as we three priests who are studying, meaning that only a fraction
gets done of what should if we were all trained hands.”24 Doubtless the
Italian Jesuit took solace in the fact that by 1608, he and his colleagues had
brought about the conversion of the Chinese master who visited the resi-
dence to read lessons.25 At the same time that these lessons were taking
place at Nanjing, Sabatino de Ursis and Diego de Pantoja were studying
at Peking alongside Matteo Ricci and Sebastião Fernandes.
The reference to the Jing as part of the Jesuits’ program of study and
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the intimation that they spent years under the tutelage of indigenous in-
structors is as intriguing as it is enigmatic. What specific texts did they
read? One can safely assume that their readings included the Sishu, or
Four Books, the central works of the Confucian tradition (the Doctrine of
the Mean, the Great Learning, the Analects, and the Mencius). But it re-
mains unclear if all of the missionaries during this early period also read
the Wujing, or Five Classics, that is, the Documents Classic, the Record of
Rites, the Book of Changes, the Book of Odes, and the Spring and Autumn
Annals. And what of other works of philosophy, literature, or religion? A
catalogue of the texts seized from the library at their Nanjing residence in
1616 suggests that the missionaries’ collection was one that might be con-
sidered typical for Chinese scholars, but it does not reveal any penchant
for collecting rare or valuable works.26 More likely their studies during
these first decades were organized along utilitarian lines with the aim of
giving new arrivals access to a literary register that they would attempt to
reproduce in their own writings. Whatever the precise content of their
studies may have been, according to Diego de Pantoja, several literati ex-
pressed their admiration at the Jesuits’ engagement with the works of the
Confucian canon. The knowledge acquired by the foreign priests in their
journey along the Way of the Sages, their Chinese peers suggested, made
them so superior to their compatriots that they would no doubt be elected
pope if they ever returned to Europe.27
In the second decade of the seventeenth century, as both Jesuit enter-
prises in East Asia underwent dramatic crises, the missionaries seques-
tered at Hangzhou and Macau had time to ponder the language training
methods they had employed thus far. The contrast between the tech-
niques used in Japan and those employed in China was stark, and João
Rodrigues, the famed interpreter, spelled out the differences in his Arte
Breve da Lingoa Iapoa (Macau, 1620). In this invaluable book, which is
at once a Japanese grammar, a reference work, and a cultural treatise,
Rodrigues defended the use of a program rooted in the study of rules and
“grammatical precepts with good masters, listening to lessons from books
in which the pure and elegant language is contained, composing and do-
ing other appropriate exercises.”28 His notion of proper study was formed
with regard to the methods used by the Society in its colleges for teaching
Latin, Greek, and Hebrew—not to mention the methods employed by
the Japan mission, where the substantial numbers of men who arrived be-
tween 1576 and 1614 permitted a similar type of classroom study.29 More-
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over, Rodrigues argued that this was the ideal method for teaching lan-
guages to missionaries since their maturity and familiarity with studying
made their task easier. To be sure, he conceded, those who studied in this
manner often sacrificed elegance and fluency; almost all of them were
prone to “many improprieties” in their speech.30
But there was another way of learning Asian languages, according
to Rodrigues—the way that had been used by the China Jesuits. This
method involved total immersion in a foreign environment, where one
would learn the tongue by living alongside native speakers and “diligently
noting various phrases and ways of speaking of diverse subjects.” As a re-
sult, one would learn vocabulary easily, although writing and composing
would continue to be a challenge. In sum, Rodrigues conceded that this
way of learning led to developing a more natural speaking ability than was
possible by following classroom instruction, but deemed it inappropriate
for members of religious orders since it involved “constant dealings with
the natives, being always in their midst.” Even if a student was not re-
strained by the bonds of community life, Rodrigues insisted, this way of
studying demanded “at the very least an extraordinary diligence.”31
But should one assume that the China Jesuits were indeed possessed of
such uncommon capacities? Surely not, given the fact that during the first
fifty years of the mission they spent an average of four years each studying
Chinese language and literature. The slow pace of conversions during that
period ensured that they had plenty of time to spare for this endeavor, and
so they slowly worked their way toward fluency and familiarity with the
Confucian canon. Moreover, the China mission never received enough re-
cruits to warrant the type of classroom teaching that Rodrigues pre-
scribed. Nor had any Chinese-speaking missionaries taken the time to
compose an arte of their adopted tongue à la Arte Breve da Lingoa Iapoa—
and they may even have doubted whether such a task was possible. Also,
since the Jesuits were spread thin among their far-flung residences, they
had no choice but to immerse themselves fully in Chinese society. Never-
theless, the missionaries did retain the impulse—so typical of their or-
der—to form classes for language study, and they would attempt to im-
plement a plan of studies as soon as they had enough new arrivals at one
time to permit it.
Even if the China Jesuits were forced to rely on teaching methods that
contained a stronger imprint of indigenous techniques than their order’s
standard practices, they did more than seek a passing fluency in Manda-
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rin. It is worth noting that the years spent by the Jesuits on their studies
imbued them with a tangible sense of admiration for the complexity of
Chinese thought. Modern scholars are aware of the appreciation that men
such as Matteo Ricci had for Confucian philosophy (though the same
cannot be said for East Asian religious thought), but less well known is
that their successors, in general, shared this sentiment. To be sure, since
the Jesuits had spent their formative years in academic environments
where humanistic inquiry was common coin, the task of studying the
Chinese philosophical canon spoke directly to their talents. It is therefore
no surprise that during the mission’s early decades, when prudence, perse-
cution, or politics demanded that they keep a low profile, the Jesuits re-
peatedly returned to their studies to refine their strategies for introducing
Christianity into the native cultural framework.
Even a minor figure such as João Monteiro rhapsodized in an Annual
Letter about how the study of Chinese texts served as an intellectual ref-
uge from the hardships of missionary work. In them, he claimed, it was
possible to find “pearls of wisdom so full of honey and so covered with the
sugar of divine consolation” that all of the dangers and drudgery of life in
China seemed to disappear. Monteiro opined that the years of language
study required of the missionaries seemed to be “brief months.” He also
contended that the priests who took up the study of Chinese books de-
rived more pleasure than “the Poets in the lessons of their Homer or Vir-
gil, the Rhetoricians in their Cicero and Lucian, the Philosophers in their
Plato and Aristotle, and the Mathematicians in their Euclid and Archime-
des.” What made this academic endeavor so engaging, in Monteiro’s view,
were the Chinese characters. These “enigmatic hieroglyphics” had many
varieties of meaning, a characteristic that made them “pleasing and amus-
ing.”32 Although Monteiro’s words were in part destined to disabuse po-
tential recruits in Europe who held Chinese to be an impossible lan-
guage—a tactic employed by the China Jesuits on previous occasions to
boost their numbers—they no doubt reflect commonly held views of the
missionaries in late Ming and early Qing China.33
A Ratio Studiorum for China
When news of the founding of the Vice-Province reached Macau in 1619,
the China Jesuits began to feel a true enthusiasm about their enter-
prise. The end of their troubles at Nanjing and the return of Nicolas
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Trigault with a crop of recruits were cause for celebration. In this heady
atmosphere they made ambitious plans for the mission’s future, devis-
ing strategies about how best to proceed after years of sequestration.
Taking their cue from past experience no less than from the suggestions of
their mandarin protectors, the Jesuits reaffirmed their commitment to the
study of Chinese language and thought. These were the keys, they be-
lieved, to avoiding future persecutions and expanding the mission’s geo-
graphic reach.
The orders from Rome that mandated severing their new administra-
tive unit from the withering Province of Japan encouraged the China Je-
suits to standardize the techniques they used for training new arrivals.
More specifically, the foundational rules for the Vice-Province that Supe-
rior General Muzio Vitelleschi sent to Visitor Gabriel de Matos (1572–
1634) in 1621 prohibited individual missionaries from deciding “the books,
the method, or the amount of time of their studies” as they saw fit. In-
stead, the elders of the mission were instructed to consult on how best to
produce a ratio studiorum, a plan of studies, for teaching guanhua and
Chinese thought.34
The concept of a ratio studiorum would have been clear to all members
of the Vice-Province. What Vitelleschi wanted the senior China Jesuits to
produce was a set of rules organized in the same fashion as the pedagogical
framework that structured the personnel and curriculum of the Society’s
colleges throughout the world. In an effort to homogenize the teaching
methods of its educational establishments, various members of the order
from across Europe had worked for years to produce a model curriculum
that could be applied universally to all Jesuit colleges. The ratio studiorum
that was promulgated throughout the Society’s provinces in 1599 was flexi-
ble enough to accommodate the cultural variations of the different coun-
tries where it was to be employed, but structured enough to ensure a high
degree of curricular uniformity and standard mechanisms for evaluating
the teaching at any given school. The same goals were set for the ratio
studiorum that was commissioned for the China mission, with the expec-
tation that the curriculum laid down in the early 1620s would last for de-
cades.
The consultations that produced the Vice-Province’s ratio studiorum
most likely took place from 1622 until 1624 under the direction of Manuel
Dias the elder. Dias had been deputized by Visitor Matos to conduct an
inspection of the mission in the wake of the Nanjing affair. On his tour he
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had the opportunity to speak with almost all Jesuits who had “some expe-
rience with the study of Chinese letters and language,” including Niccolò
Longobardo, Manuel Dias the younger, Alfonso Vagnone, Giulio Aleni,
Álvaro Semedo, Pedro Ribeiro, Nicolas Trigault, and Gaspar Ferreira.
Most of the information regarding the subject material to be used during
the proposed course of study, as well as the timing and order of its reading
and writing components, likely originated with this group. Dias, a man
with more than ten years of experience as rector of the College of Macau,
was almost certainly the one responsible for giving the curriculum its
structure and apportioning the rules and obligations to each participant in
the teaching process, from the Vice-Provincial on down to the coadjutors.
Dias’s program consisted of four years of study, divided into three
phases. The initial stage of the course, the first six months, was for train-
ing missionaries how to speak guanhua correctly. The second, lasting a
year and a half, was for reading texts from the Confucian canon with a fel-
low Jesuit (often a Macanese coadjutor) for a master. The third stage con-
sisted of two years of lessons with a Chinese master. This instructor was to
give lessons on composition and readings from the texts used in the pre-
ceding stage of the program, explaining them as they were understood by
literati. By laying out a course of study that was equal in length to the
amount of time devoted by Jesuits to the study of moral and systematic
theology, Dias made clear the conviction that the language program was
crucial for the mission’s development. He went so far as to say that such a
plan of study was just as indispensable “for the service of God, the good of
the Society, and the conversion of souls as that of philosophy in Europe.”
Dias charged the Vice-Provincial with providing the broadest level of
oversight for the program, making sure that it was practiced and preserved
in its entirety. He also warned against shortening the program from its full
four years—a considerable span for priests to be inactive once in China,
given the mission’s chronic manpower shortages—“without a very urgent
reason,” since he saw the future of the Vice-Province hanging in the bal-
ance.35
The primary aim of the ratio studiorum was to produce missionaries
qualified to assume the erudite scholar-priest’s mantle bequeathed to them
by Matteo Ricci. They were expected to be able to engage in dialogue
with prospective converts from different levels of Chinese society and to
sustain amicable relations with the governing elite of the cities where they
resided. Put another way, they were to turn themselves into ersatz literati,
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adopting the dominant fashions of the Jiangnan region. The Vice-Provin-
cial was instructed to emplace his aspiring scholars of Chinese in an area
best suited for studying, one with the optimal “shelter, climate, and other
things beneficial” to that purpose. To the Jesuits in late Ming China, this
was shorthand for Jiangnan, since that was where they maintained the
most residences and where intersecting trade routes kept the area awash
with provisions. Moreover, the dialect spoken there—at least among lite-
rati—was guanhua. Not for nothing was this dialect called Mandarin; it
was the form of speech most widely used by the members of the bureau-
cracy. While the events of 1616 removed Nanjing from the list of possible
training sites, the mission had nearby residences where the Jesuits could
find an abundance of masters who spoke Mandarin as “purely and clearly”
as they desired.36
To be sure, the question of what form of spoken Chinese the missionar-
ies were taught raises its corollary: How did they penetrate the profusion
of local dialects that would have barred them from communicating with
popular milieux? The missionaries realized almost from the start that the
greatest numbers of potential converts were to be found among poor rus-
tics. Educated converts, the ones who spoke guanhua, were comparatively
few, although they could be found throughout the empire. Could it be
that the Jesuits simply did not speak to their flocks, or that they addressed
them only though interpreters? Missionary sources are ambiguous about
the issue, offering few references to local dialects. One exception is the tes-
timony of Francisco Simões regarding a mission circuit in North Zhili,
which suggests that some priests had considerable trouble with local dia-
lects, at least in their first years in China. Most, if not all, of the area’s vil-
lages seemed to have their “own particular ways of speaking, tantamount
to different languages,” Simões lamented. Such diversity could be found
even in hamlets separated by “one league or less,” he complained, making
it appear that “the Devil mixed the language up in such a way as to make
preaching the Holy Gospel more difficult.”37
It seems ironic that the Jesuits devoted so much time to studying a
form of Chinese that would offer them so little capacity to carry out the
task of communicating the Christian gospel to the masses. But there was a
certain rationality in the choice of guanhua. Mandarin, as the priests
learned early on, was widely understood even outside literati circles, if
only because even the most remote village had some form of intercourse
with the imperial bureaucracy. Moreover, the extreme diversity of spoken
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dialects from province to province was countered by the uniformity of the
written language. His lament about the confusion sowed by the Devil
notwithstanding, Francisco Simões recognized that Chinese characters fa-
cilitated his interactions with the populace, “since the letters and hi-
eroglyphs, in spite of their being pronounced in one way or another, do
not vary in meaning and everywhere signify the same thing.” Yet another
consideration speaks more to the academic capacities of the Jesuits than to
the logic of their training program. Individuals who were capable of mas-
tering Latin during their schooling, the Portuguese language during their
passage eastward, and Mandarin during their early study years in China
would surely have been able, given time, to learn the dialects of areas
around their residences. After all, a Jesuit assigned to an area with a dis-
tinct variant of Chinese, such as Cantonese or Shanghainese, faced the
same predicament that an imperial official sent to the same area con-
fronted—except for the likelihood that the Jesuit would stay in that place
longer and have more frequent dealings with plebeians. Although their
Mendicant detractors might fault the Jesuits in Fujian for not being able
to speak the local dialect (the Dominicans and Franciscans spent their for-
mative years amid the Fujianese sojourners in Manila), surely this final
linguistic hurdle was not insuperable.38
Just like its European counterpart, the ratio studiorum for the China
mission prescribed a structured learning environment. Each academic
year was divided into semesters, with two classes to be held every day, six
days a week. On any given day, students would hear one hour of lessons in
the morning and forty-five minutes in the afternoon, with recitations re-
quired each day. The superior of the residence where lessons were held
was to assume the role of rector, moderating the pace of the program
where necessary. Such moderation often meant controlling the ambi-
tions of the missionaries, men with long years of training behind them
who were eager to begin their apostolic endeavors. As a result, the ratio
studiorum contains more injunctions about how to slow the students’
progress than how to speed it up. In light of the perceived health risks of
excessive exertion, the superior should “not let the priests study during
rest time, nor during the time allotted for sleep.” Some form of recreation
“used by the Society, but not strange to the Chinese,” was also mandated
for Sunday afternoons and feast days with the goal of keeping those study-
ing “sane and happy.” During the summer, a two-month vacation was im-
posed on the missionary-pupils; during the first week of each month, all
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studies were prohibited. In the other weeks of vacation, the residential su-
perior might encourage his charges to hone their reading comprehension
by studying selected Chinese texts written by Jesuit authors.39
The first two years of the program were to be conducted by a “master
who reads in Portuguese,” that is, either a European missionary or a Chi-
nese coadjutor. For the authors of the ratio studiorum, the “Portuguese”
master was the linchpin of the program’s success, since his “diligence and
way of reading” would determine whether his students learned “the lan-
guage and literature poorly or well.” To underscore this claim, Manuel
Dias the elder asserted that teaching one Jesuit correctly was equivalent to
catechizing many Chinese. One of the duties reserved for the Vice-Pro-
vincial was selecting the right man. He was told to pick the most effective
teacher even if it meant removing this individual from “another occupa-
tion, from which he derived more consolation.”40 The ratio studiorum sug-
gests that the assignment of teachers caused consternation among talented
missionaries, frustrations that were directly addressed in admonitions to
would-be instructors. These men were urged to be tolerant toward their
pupils and warned against belittling them. Dias reminded the instructors
that their students—whose ranks included musicians, astronomers, physi-
cians, and theologians—were often “already masters of higher sciences,”
mature men who “should not be treated like children.” They were told to
treat their pupils charitably “and neither get annoyed nor irritate them if
they ask about the same thing or character many times.”41
At the base of the educational edifice erected by the ratio studiorum
were, of course, the students themselves. They were forewarned that con-
stancy and dedication were indispensable if they were to attain their goal,
because the “lack of an arte, the variety of tones, the ambiguity of words,
and the multitude of characters” were formidable difficulties.42 Yet Dias
reassured them that they would benefit from divine protection during this
“heavy labor” for the conversion of Asian souls. He also enjoined them to
respect the orders of their masters and residential superiors, observing the
intended structure and content of the program. Most important, students
were instructed to pay attention to learning the correct pronunciation of
the tones used in guanhua, the keys to learning spoken Mandarin. They
were encouraged to repeat their lessons aloud every day to ensure proper
pronunciation, “because as difficult as the tones are to grasp at first, they
are as helpful for the rest of your life for speaking and writing Chinese
words in Portuguese.”43
During the initial six months of the course, Jesuit pupils were supposed
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to acquire a familiarity with spoken guanhua and to begin learning to read
and write characters. Their first task was to start memorizing characters
from a vocabulary list organized “as a bifolio,” that is, with the Chinese
terms and their definitions laid out in parallel columns of text. Manuel
Dias also recommended using “the indices that Diego de Pantoja made.”
Vocabulary lists such as these can be found in European libraries, but it is
not clear to which texts these instructions refer.44 Jesuit masters could avail
themselves of Nicolas Trigault’s Xiru ermu zi, or “Western Scholars’ Aid
for the Ear and the Eye in Reading Characters” (first edition Hangzhou,
1626), for building their pupils’ vocabularies. This text contains diagrams
of Chinese characters organized according to the Western alphabet, pre-
senting a phonetic method for memorizing characters and their correct
pronunciation. Using a romanization and phonetization system modeled
on Matteo Ricci’s Xizi qiji, or “Miracle of Western Characters” (first edi-
tion Peking, 1605), Trigault’s vocabulary was well received by Jesuits and
literati alike, as evinced by its subsequent reprintings.45 Students following
the course of study outlined in the ratio studiorum were instructed to
make use of accepted lexicons such as these. They were specifically warned
against making their own lists, compositions which were alleged to be
“nothing but a waste of time,” since they “accustomed one to using inele-
gant style.”46
The second component of the first stage of the program was designed
to introduce students to speaking guanhua fluently. Just as students in the
Society’s European colleges were required to speak Latin to one another,
so the ratio studiorum mandated that students speak Chinese at all times,
except during their recreation periods.47 But as João Rodrigues claimed in
his Arte Breve da Lingoa Iapoa, true facility in a foreign tongue could come
only if one enjoyed daily interactions with native speakers. Here the
China Jesuits’ limited numbers worked in their favor, since they were
forced to employ servant boys at their residences who performed the du-
ties apportioned to the order’s temporal coadjutors elsewhere. In fact, the
ratio studiorum recommended that residential superiors assign a domestic
to each student so that they might practice speaking together in their free
time. Manuel Dias also suggested that students be given “superintendence
over the chores of the house,” obliging them to engage with the servants
at the residence on a daily basis about a variety of subjects related to man-
aging a domestic economy—something they would all later do when they
moved on to their own residences.48
One of the most important aspects of the initial training in spoken
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Chinese was teaching indigenous forms of etiquette. The residential supe-
riors were to provide the example of their own public comportment, grad-
ually introducing the pupils to the “courtesies used when dealing with and
speaking to the Chinese,” as well as the accepted forms of table manners,
the proper way to drink tea, “the way to arrange one’s hair,” and other cul-
turally specific practices.49 Students were also introduced to etiquette dur-
ing their lessons by using “speech books” of the type employed by the mis-
sionaries since the 1590s. These texts consisted of dialogues designed to
make Jesuits familiar with handling public interactions, such as with their
literati friends or the members of their flocks. One such text was written
by José Monteiro as an example of a polite exchange between a priest and
a Chinese Christian:
Priest:
What is your family name? = Kiaò yeù guèi sìm.
Christian:
My family name is Cham = Çùi gîn çièn sìm ChÁm [Chang].
P: What is your Christian name? = Kiào çò xìn má xìm mîm.
C: My Christian name is Paulo = Xìm mîm Paò Lá.
P: How old are you? = Yeù leào tÇ xào niên kì.
C: I am eighty-five years old = Yeù pÛ xÝ ù sùi.
P: What a beautiful age! = Haò cÁo xeù.
C: I’m too old to be good for anything = Çùi gîn laò leaò má cÁn.
P: How long have you been a Christian? = FÉm tiÃn chù kiaò. Yèu leaò
kì tÇ niên kì.
C: I’ve been a Christian since I was a child = Çûm yeù fÉm kiaò.
P: Then the whole family is Christian = YÝ kiÁ tÉ fÉm kiaò leaò.
C: My wife is not Christian = Pì fâm má yeu lîm sì.
P: Why don’t you exhort her? = Çèm má pù kiuèn lìm chìm.
C: I exhort her, she doesn’t want to. She’s got the Devil in her head =
Kiuèn, pù kÃm. Xì mò guèi tße têu.50
The authors of the ratio studiorum intended that by memorizing the intri-
cacies of Chinese salutations and having the students reenact them, such
mundane interchanges might become spontaneous. Other dialogues were
also drawn up to teach the standard questions and responses to Chinese
queries on points of Christian doctrine, or how to make small talk about
travel, food, or the weather. Since the implicit goal of this program was to
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enable missionaries to make friends and influence people, it should come
as no surprise that today’s language programs employ, mutatis mutandis,
the same type of teaching techniques.
The third part of the initial phase of the language program consisted of
writing characters. For half an hour of each class day for these six months,
the “Portuguese” instructor was to teach his pupils the correct order for
making the brush strokes of each new character. The goal of these lessons
was to learn “how to write them like the Chinese,” and for this a native
method of instruction was employed.51 Students were instructed to use a
text such as Qianzi wen (Thousand Character Classic), just as Matteo
Ricci and Michele Ruggieri had done, and trace the characters on sheets
of fine paper. Pupils were reminded how important it was for them to de-
velop a “great facility in writing Chinese well,” and were instructed to pay
close attention to learning the accepted method of romanizing Chinese
terms “with aspirations and accents.” At this phase, the authors of the ra-
tio studiorum thought that writing short texts would be a “waste of time”
and suggested that the students should rather translate “part of their past
lessons into Portuguese or Latin” for an hour on Sundays or feast days.
The aim of such exercises was not to produce literal translations but to
prove that the students had understood the meaning of the Chinese
phrases.52
Confucian Canon Fodder
Once equipped with a basic knowledge of the language, students entered
the second phase of the program prescribed in the ratio studiorum. This
phase consisted of a year and a half of lessons with a “Portuguese” master
on Chinese thought, that is, reading texts from the Confucian canon.
During their lessons, pupils would come to understand the structure of
classical Chinese and how it differed from spoken guanhua, while being
introduced to the foundations of Chinese history, philosophy, and law. As
they worked their way through the various parts of the Sishu, or Four
Books, their “Portuguese” master would discourse on style and grammar
while offering glosses on the textual content. Students were issued copies
of the works read during their lessons and encouraged to make notes in
the margins of these texts to keep for later reference. As Manuel Dias did
not fail to comment, annotating readily available texts was less expensive
and time-consuming than copying out the works by hand.53
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The ratio studiorum clearly outlines the structure of the “Portuguese”
master’s lessons. The primary template for the teaching techniques em-
ployed in China was that used by the Society elsewhere to teach Latin or
Greek literature, a model that was familiar to all the missionaries. Each
lesson consisted of readings from sequential passages in a given Chinese
text, with the instructor explaining “not only the meaning of each indi-
vidual character, but especially the meaning of the whole phrase and what
it corresponds to in Portuguese or Latin.” He would also elaborate on the
grammatical construction of each sentence. Particular attention was to be
paid to characters that appeared in the text for the first time. Lessons
would end each day with explanations of the more confusing parts of each
passage and with a few selected phrases. Twice each week the master was
to assign compositions for homework, typically on subjects found in that
week’s readings. When the students had progressed to the end of the text
they had been analyzing, the instructor would reread the text aloud, “as
Latin books are read in our schools for the benefit of the listeners.”54
As might be expected, given the attention to detail that marks the ratio
studiorum, Dias and his consultors also specified the texts to be taught.
The Vice-Provincial was charged with making sure that the approved cur-
riculum for the first two years of the program was limited to the dialogue
books mentioned in the previous section, the Sishu, and the Shujing,
meaning that a year and a half was devoted to the Great Learning, the
Doctrine of the Mean, the Analects, the Mencius, and the Documents Clas-
sic. The last of these titles belongs to the Wujing, or Five Classics, and deals
primarily with historical events from China’s remote antiquity. But if resi-
dential superiors were to purchase copies of the Five Classics for their stu-
dents, the pupils might be tempted to read on through the other texts
found there. The ratio studiorum permitted that for the Yijing, or Book of
Changes, and even suggested using the Changes for lessons—albeit spar-
ingly, because “this book has little for us,” as Dias put it. But when it came
to others of the Five Classics, that is, the Book of Odes, the Record of Rites,
and the Spring and Autumn Annals, Dias was emphatic. They were “use-
less for our men,” was his verdict, and were to be kept out of the mission-
aries’ classrooms.55
The works selected for this curriculum reveal that by the 1620s the Je-
suits had reached some conclusions about how much engagement with in-
digenous intellectual traditions was necessary for making successful mis-
sionaries. The choice of the Four Books, works read by every contemporary
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schoolboy, indicates their desire to be versed in the standard literary refer-
ents, philosophical precepts, and cultural register used by many of their
prospective interlocutors. The prescribed use of the “ordinary gloss,” in all
probability referring to the commentaries by Zhu Xi (1130–1200) that
were found in most editions of the Sishu in the seventeenth century, fur-
ther confirms their intent to enter the common contemporary frame of
reference.56 Passages from these texts would enable the Jesuits—with no
small amount of logical and rhetorical gymnastics—to suggest to edu-
cated Chinese that their traditions (when stripped of their Buddhist and
Daoist accretions) were at least congenial to Christian teachings and at
best contained traces of divine revelation. The principle of utility can like-
wise be observed in their selection of the Documents Classic and parts of
the Book of Changes. In the Documents, the Jesuits discovered descriptions
of Chinese civilization before the birth of Christ that they could compare
to the accounts of Western society found in the Old Testament or classical
antiquity. More specifically, they found the terms Tian (Heaven) and
Shangdi (Lord on High) used to refer to a deity who responded to human
pleas.57 The cryptic style of the Changes, rich in symbolism, offered a
wealth of possibilities for analogy with elements of Christian revelation—
opportunities for suggesting that China had known the Judeo-Christian
God before the advent of Buddhism.
The last phase of the language program involved a systematic review of
the materials taught in the first two years. That review was to be under-
taken from a different perspective, lest the misunderstandings of one gen-
eration of missionaries be passed on to the following one. Fearing just
that, the authors of the ratio studiorum planned for pupils to spend two
full years under a Chinese master who was not one of their confreres. On
the one hand, a native master would give students a true insider’s view of
indigenous culture. On the other, he would be able to teach composition
and style far better than someone who was not a native speaker. Such mas-
ters were not hard to find, especially in the Jiangnan region, where unem-
ployed literati and failed civil service candidates abounded during the late
Ming and early Qing periods. Although Manuel Dias stipulated that these
masters be “well versed” in Chinese books, the content of this part of the
program set the bar for prospective teachers low. In late imperial China it
was not hard to find someone who could read the Four Books, the Docu-
ments Classic, and the Book of Changes, as well as teach the elements of
style and composition.
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Before hiring a Chinese master, however, the Jesuits needed to negoti-
ate a favorable contract and make sure they got the most for their money.
The expenses for language teachers were paid out of the Vice-Province’s
meager financial reserves, and that fact encouraged the missionaries to
find masters who not only were diligent but also agreed to serve for a fair,
if not discounted, wage.58 It appears that whenever possible, they pre-
ferred to hire literati converts. Once a Chinese master was hired, the resi-
dential superior had the duty of maintaining good relations between him
and the students. The superior was to model his approach to the master
according to native employment practices, so that the instructor enjoyed
his teaching and “did not complain.” On occasion, however, attempting
to force the European academic calendar onto the pattern of Chinese life
proved difficult—for example, when the residential superiors sought to
discourage the master from taking a long holiday break at the time of the
Chinese New Year celebrations.59
The structure of the lessons to be given by the Chinese master was sim-
ilar to the one prescribed for the “Portuguese” master. The missionary-
students were to go through the Four Books and the Documents Classic in
order. There would be two hours of lessons each day. The Chinese master
was to respond to any questions that might arise about his explanations of
the texts and expound the significance of every character. Pupils were
meant to get a solid grounding in the teachings of the “sect of the literati,”
paying attention to the way they understood the creation of the world, its
eventual end, the nature of man and of the soul, “and all the rest that per-
tains to Chinese philosophy.” It was hoped that in the process of learning
about these topics from a literatus, missionaries would be able to hone
their rhetoric in anticipation of objections to their arguments that they
might face during their proselytizing activities. The master was instructed
to use the “ordinary gloss,” that is, Zhu Xi’s commentary, but could also
make use of the “gloss of Cham Colao.”60 This text, the Sishu jizhu zhijie,
was written by Grand Secretary Zhang Juzheng (1525–1582) in colloquial
style as a primer for the young Wanli emperor. From it, students would
obtain a brief introduction to state orthodoxy as understood by their near
contemporaries in the Ming era.61
The Chinese master was also charged with training his pupils in elegant
composition. But while the ratio studiorum stipulated two weekly lessons
on writing style, it also specified that these lessons were not to teach the
“style of Vem Cham,” that is, the style used for writing (bagu) wenzhang,
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or eight-legged essays, for the civil service examinations.62 The Jesuits in-
tended to mimic literati only up to a point. They were uninterested in ac-
quiring the techniques of test-taking, the sine qua non for climbing onto
the ladder of success in the imperial bureaucracy. It was far more impor-
tant for them to learn the art of writing books persuasively, since it was ex-
pected that after completing their course of studies they would spend
much of their free time composing apologetic tracts to further the cause
of the Christian religion. In teaching composition, the Chinese master
was to assign topics for essays that he would later correct. To acquaint stu-
dents more fully with forms of social intercourse, the Chinese master
was also to teach pupils how to write correspondence, both short notes
and longer letters. Once they had completed the language program and
headed off to their assigned residences, such skills in conducting public
affairs would be a great boon to the missionaries, who were often obliged
to deal with members of the social elite on their own.
This discussion has assumed that the pupils in the course sketched in
the ratio studiorum were both European Jesuits and Macanese coadjutors.
Yet since those in the latter group were to be freighted with the duty of
serving as language instructors in the future, the ratio studiorum concludes
with a series of additional obligations for them. Whereas priests were en-
trusted with learning and remembering the lessons on their own, coadju-
tors were to memorize the contents of the Four Books and the Documents
Classic and recite what they had learned to the master each day. During
the summer recess of the second year of the program, these students were
to be drilled on part of the contents of the Jesuits’ apologetic works, “at
least enough to make them able to speak about the books with the Chi-
nese who ask about them.”63
In order to become more useful auxiliaries, coadjutors were also to
learn from a trained missionary how to catechize Chinese Christians. This
instruction was to take place during the holidays of the third year of the
program, when they were in the middle of their lessons with the Chinese
master. According to the ratio studiorum, the content of the catechetical
message was of central importance, and the aim of these lessons was to
make sure that the brothers knew precisely what Chinese terms to use. In
light of the controversies current in the 1620s over the use of certain
phrases to signify Christian concepts, it is not surprising that the instruc-
tor who taught these lessons was also charged with making clear which
terms were not to be used “since they do not match the truth of each mys-
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tery.” Finally, each student was to learn how to present an abbreviated cat-
echism to prospective converts on their deathbeds, “when there is not
time to catechize perfectly.”64 Equipped with the same competency in lan-
guage (if not in performing rituals) as priests, coadjutors became an inte-
gral part of the Vice-Province’s division of labor. On reaching an accept-
able level of fluency, priests were to begin preaching to the domestics in
their residences once every two weeks and hearing the confessions of the
local Christians.65 Coadjutors, by contrast, were assigned the more routine
and repetitive task of teaching doctrine, a chore for which priests would
have increasingly less time as the seventeenth century went on.
Sapientia Sinica
In 1624 Manuel Dias submitted the ratio studiorum to Visitor Jerónimo
Rodrigues for evaluation and implementation. It remains unclear if the
Visitor ever ordered the Vice-Province’s superiors to use the program ex-
actly as it was proposed, since subsequent documents from the mission
do not specifically mention the plan of studies. Nevertheless, evidence
found in Annual Letters, administrative orders and reports, and epistolary
sources makes a detailed reconstruction of the language program em-
ployed by the Vice-Province after 1624 possible. From these documents,
one can see that the Jesuits initially adhered to the program outlined in
the ratio studiorum. Over the remaining decades of the seventeenth cen-
tury, however, that program was subjected to alterations in response to a
number of factors. The most important of these was the Vice-Province’s
chronic lack of recruits. The skills gained by the missionaries from their
training program made them far more effective in their work of con-
version than could have been expected from their numbers. Paradoxi-
cally, this success created pastoral burdens that forced a reduction in the
amount of time later recruits were allotted for studying. By the beginning
of the eighteenth century, the Jesuits of the Vice-Province, with the excep-
tion of the missionaries at Peking, had all but abandoned the systematic
study of Chinese thought in favor of sending new arrivals to minister to
native Christians as rapidly as possible.
When the Jesuits left their secluded quarters in Hangzhou and Macau
in 1623 to return to the mission field, they needed a new site for holding
their language courses. After all, with a shift in the political winds in Pe-
king, a change in the status of the mission, and an infusion of new blood
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from Europe thanks to Nicolas Trigault, the missionaries could rightfully
anticipate that their ranks would swell. Yet their list of possible locations
was not extensive. Neither Macau nor Nanjing would do, and the Peking
house was too public an environment for training students. Of the resi-
dences in Jiangnan, the Hangzhou and Shanghai houses were busy centers
of religious activity, places where pupils might easily become distracted
from their studies. The best choice appeared to be the town of Jiading, a
short distance from Shanghai, where Inácio Sun Yuanhua had offered the
missionaries part of his palace as a residence in 1621. At once in the
Jiangnan region, at close proximity to the Society’s other establishments,
and without the demands and distractions of a substantial local Christian
community, Jiading was an ideal setting.
Perhaps the best aspect of the Jiading residence was that it was situated
within the private compound of an imperial official. This fact ensured
that the students enjoyed protection and seclusion, as well as spacious
grounds for recreation. The Vice-Province had earmarked the Jiading
house for language training as early as 1623; it is known that Álvaro
Semedo was training a priest, Johann Terrenz Schreck, and a coadjutor,
Pascoal Mendes, there that year.66 Writing in the Annual Letter for the fol-
lowing year, Francisco Furtado had little to say about the residence, which
did “not attend to conversions” but rather accommodated “the class of
language and letters.” By 1624 the Vice-Province’s superiors had sent a to-
tal of three priests and three brothers to study at Jiading. The house was
described as “very commodious” for the purpose of teaching Chinese but
not nearly as serviceable if there were “a crowd of catechumens and culti-
vation of Christians” for the missionaries to handle. The students made
considerable progress in the calm of Sun’s palace, and it was claimed that
in just over two years, one of the priests could read Chinese books and
“understand them as well as Latin ones.” Those who had commenced
their studies in the late summer of 1623 had allegedly learned “more than
five thousand characters” in eight months of lessons and were able to re-
produce them “by heart without going to see the vocabulary.”67
With a sufficient number of students and a proper teaching environ-
ment, the Jesuits were able to enact the ratio studiorum at Jiading. Reports
from 1625 and 1626 indicate that the residence was run like a small col-
lege, with a Jesuit instructor teaching three priests and six students from
Macau. It was duly noted that this concentration of missionaries lived in
community “without making many Christians.”68 As the 1620s drew to a
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close, it appeared that the Vice-Province had successfully put its class-
room-style teaching program on a solid footing. Indeed, it appeared that
the creation of the “college” at Jiading would meet the training needs of
the mission for decades to follow.
But those appearances were deceptive, and a change in the political cli-
mate forced the Jesuits to abandon this residence. By 1631 the missionaries
were no doubt aware of the trouble that might arise from their links to
Sun Yuanhua, their patron who stood accused of treason. When Licenti-
ate Inácio was condemned for fomenting revolt against the Chongzhen
emperor and beheaded in 1632, the missionaries left Jiading. This move
was meant to protect them from an official backlash and, as Francesco
Brancati later recorded, to forestall any potential persecution against the
local Christians.69 In any event, the Vice-Province lost its dedicated teach-
ing facility. Jiading was the last residence to be used almost exclusively for
conducting missionary training.
The loss of Jiading must have came as a blow to the Jesuits’ hopes of
giving their Chinese enterprise more solid institutional foundations. But
in fact, the mission’s expansion, beginning in the 1630s, quickly rendered
the idea of that type of group training impracticable. By 1636 the Vice-
Province had eleven residences, all of which needed men. With only
twenty-five European priests and four Macanese coadjutors, it was impos-
sible for the mission superiors to consider bringing even four or five Jesu-
its together in one house.70 This exigency did not mean a radical depar-
ture from the teaching methods prescribed by the ratio studiorum, because
the rules laid down in that document were flexible enough to conform to
any class size or location. For example, in 1631 one priest was responsible
for teaching another at Hangzhou, while at Nanchang another missionary
was charged with giving lessons to two recent arrivals.71 So the shift from a
“college” model of teaching to one in which newly arrived priests were as-
signed to live with experienced missionaries who doubled as their instruc-
tors does not appear to have jeopardized the curriculum. In 1631 Visitor
André Palmeiro reiterated the main lines of the teaching program put
forth seven years previously. After reviewing and approving the content
and structure of the current course of studies, Palmeiro exhorted the stu-
dents to diligence and ordered them not to distract themselves with “curi-
osities and instruments,” although he conceded that missionaries with
technical skills could use such implements in moderation “to alleviate
their studies.”72
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The shift away from a system of language teaching at a centralized loca-
tion to a method of teaching by apprenticeship at dispersed mission sta-
tions had its costs and its benefits. While it spread the teaching burden
from the shoulders of one to those of several missionaries, it diminished
the uniformity and, indeed, the quality of the instruction. Even as the
Vice-Province was enabled by the change to distribute its manpower more
evenly, the trained missionaries at each residence were obliged to di-
vide their time between their pastoral or proselytizing activities and their
teaching duties. Given the pace of the mission’s expansion, however, the
Jesuits had no choice but to dilute their resources among their residences
and hope that new arrivals would learn the language quickly enough to
take on their part of their pastoral responsibilities. It is possible that the
change in teaching methods had the effect of raising morale among new
recruits, who surely found the prospect of having to commit themselves to
years of language study frustrating. Involving the language students in the
routine activities of mission station life soon after their arrival instead of
sequestering them meant that they would acquire a new tongue, gain ex-
perience in dealing with Chinese Christians, and begin to realize their vo-
cations as missionaries all at the same time.
How the change was carried out in the 1630s can be reconstructed from
the Vice-Province’s personnel catalogue for 1634. This document shows
that senior Jesuits had been assigned to guide each of the students in
the acquisition of Chinese. For example, at the Kaifeng residence in
Henan Province, Rodrigo de Figueiredo, described as “very skilled in the
language and letters,” was entrusted with teaching Pietro Canevari. In
Jiangzhou, Shanxi Province, Étienne Faber received his lessons from two
confreres, Alfonso Vagnone and Brother Francisco de Lagea (1585–1647).
Similarly, Francisco Furtado and Brother Francisco Ferreira (1604–1652)
were responsible for teaching Chinese to Michel Trigault at Xi’an. At
Fuzhou, in Fujian Province, Inácio Lobo had three teachers to learn
from, namely, Simão da Cunha, Bento de Matos (1600–ca. 1657), and
Brother Manuel Gomes. At Nanchang, Álvaro Semedo taught Tranquillo
Grassetti; at Jianchang, Gaspar Ferreira taught Inácio da Costa; and at
Shanghai, Pedro Ribeiro taught Agostino Tudeschini.73 At least one con-
sequence of this type of training is worth noting. In general, Jesuits stayed
in the areas where they studied the language, suggesting that their simul-
taneous dealings with instructors and local Christians enabled them to
acquire guanhua as well as the regional dialect at the same time. Once
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they were capable of speaking to both the elite and the plebeians in a
given region, it would have been counterproductive to shift them to other
areas.
But was the ratio studiorum indeed preserved after the shift to decen-
tralized teaching? Given the pressures created by the mission’s expan-
sion, was it possible for the Jesuits to maintain their goal of giving each
new arrival years of lessons in Chinese thought? The notebooks kept by
Francesco Brancati during his language training in the late 1630s illumi-
nate the issue. This Sicilian Jesuit arrived at Macau in 1636. Early the next
year, Vice-Provincial Francisco Furtado escorted him and three other re-
cent arrivals, Ludovico Buglio, João Monteiro, and Girolamo Gravina,
into China. On their trek northward, Furtado left Buglio and Monteiro at
Nanchang in Jiangxi Province to hear lessons from Brother Francisco
Ferreira. The Vice-Provincial entrusted Gaspar Ferreira with teaching
Gravina at Jianchang in the same province and brought Brancati to the
Shanghai residence for his training, leaving the Sicilian in the company of
veteran missionary Pedro Ribeiro and Brother Manuel Gomes. It was
Gomes who was responsible for conducting the lessons. Francisco Furtado
claimed that this coadjutor, the son of a Javanese father and a Chi-
nese mother who had been raised in Macau speaking Portuguese, knew
the Chinese “language and letters well.” By the time he began to teach
Brancati, Gomes was almost thirty years old. He had spent half his life
working with the China Jesuits. Confident in the combination of the
priest’s abilities and the coadjutor’s experience, Furtado informed Visitor
Manuel Dias the elder of his certainty that in “one or two years” Brancati
would be able to contribute to the mission.74
Brancati’s progress may be traced from a series of annotations in his
personal editions of the Four Books, today preserved in the central archives
of the Society of Jesus in Rome. Recall that the ratio studiorum permitted
missionary-students to write in their copies of the Chinese texts. The Si-
cilian filled the margins—and almost every free space in each of the six
volumes—with comments in Latin, Portuguese, romanized guanhua, and
at times Italian. From the way Brancati wrote his annotations, it appears
that Gomes gave his explanations of the texts in Portuguese (the defini-
tions interspersed among the characters are most often in this language).
At times, however, Brancati also jotted down notes in other languages.
Key passages are often highlighted in the text with “index hands” pointing
to specific characters; occasionally, there are references to works from the
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Western canon. After digesting the content of each chapter, Brancati
would write a summary in Latin in the margin above the Chinese text.75
Most important for our purposes here are the dates recorded by
Brancati at various intervals in the text. In the lower margin of the first
page of the Da Xue, or Great Learning, he wrote, “We began 8 May 1637,
ad maiorem Dei gloriam.”76 This springtime date suggests that the priest
had already gained the prescribed familiarity with spoken guanhua during
his travels with Francisco Furtado (a gifted linguist who translated parts of
Aristotle’s works and their associated commentaries into Chinese) and
during the first months he spent at Shanghai. Each of the six volumes that
Brancati read consisted of approximately seventy double-sided pages, with
nine columns of text on each page (Zhu Xi’s commentaries were printed
in double columns). By June 4, 1637, Brancati and Gomes had proceeded
through the first volume of their text (including the Zhongyong, or Doc-
trine of the Mean) and were beginning the second chapter of the Lunyu, or
Analects.77 Over the course of the following month and a half, they would
continue to read that work until they paused for a summer vacation be-
tween August 6 and September 24.78 When Francesco Brancati recom-
menced his studies in the early autumn of 1637, he spent a month fin-
ishing his lessons on the Analects and started to read the Mencius, the
longest of the Four Books, on October 28.79 This text would take more
than three months to read, with a minor break at Christmastime, lasting
until January 11, 1638.80 It can safely be assumed that the pair of Jesuits
completed their reading of the Sishu around the time of the Chinese New
Year celebrations. It is unclear whether Brancati and Gomes continued to
read the Documents Classic and passages from the Book of Changes during
the spring months of 1638, but in light of their swift progress through the
Four Books, it seems likely that they did.
Brancati’s notebooks offer a number of insights into the way the Jesuits
conducted their language training in the seventeenth century’s middle de-
cades. They confirm the basic outline of the ratio studiorum, that is, an
initial immersion in spoken guanhua followed by a series of guided read-
ings from the Confucian canon. Brancati evidently finished his lessons
with Gomes in a year and a half, or six months less than the prescribed
two years of study with the “Portuguese” master. One reason for this expe-
ditious pace may have been that they skimmed over the “ordinary gloss,”
something that may be inferred from the fact that the Sicilian priest left
few annotations among the columns of commentary by Zhu Xi. Did
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Learning the Language of Birds F


[To view this image, refer to  
the print version of this title.] 
 
 
 


Brancati continue his studies with a Chinese master in the two years after
finishing with Gomes, as he was supposed to? No evidence suggests that.
If indeed the missionary had to forgo the final component of his studies,
he would have benefited from only half the recommended program. In ei-
ther case, Brancati would have had little time for academic pursuits after
finishing up with Gomes. By midsummer 1638, both Pedro Ribeiro and
the Macanese coadjutor had moved on to Hangzhou, leaving Brancati in
charge of the largest Christian community in China.81
Other Jesuits who began their studies in the late 1630s also experienced
acceleration in the pace of their training. Descriptions of how Lodovico
Buglio, Brancati’s compatriot, studied Chinese suggest that much of the
moderation considered necessary for healthy study by the authors of the
ratio studiorum had been abandoned. According to Buglio’s necrology, he
allowed nothing to impede his progress, going to the point of decorating
the walls and bookshelves of his cubicle with characters to facilitate mem-
orizing them.82 It does not appear that he spent any more time than
Brancati on his studies. In October 1639, less than three years after he first
entered China, he was assigned to open a new mission in Sichuan Prov-
ince by himself. In contrast with Brancati, whose pastoral burdens were
and remained onerous, however, in later decades Buglio enjoyed compara-
tive ease at Peking, permitting him to engage in further study.
The abbreviated course of study followed by Francesco Brancati and
Lodovico Buglio in 1637 and 1638 was representative of a trend in the evo-
lution of the Jesuits’ language teaching over the course of the seventeenth
century. As the stream of recruits from Europe was reduced to a trickle
and the numbers of new Christians swelled to a flood, newly arrived
priests could not be kept out of the action for years of lessons. Instead, the
Vice-Province’s superiors sacrificed the academic integrity of the mission-
aries’ language training for the spiritual good of their expanding flock. To
be sure, by the late 1630s the political position of the mission had changed
to such an extent that not every priest needed to be a carbon copy of
Matteo Ricci. With a handful of men ensconced at Peking, ensuring the
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Learning the Language of Birds F
Annotated folio from the Great Learning (Daxue), in the Four Books (Sishu), printed
ca. 1630. Francesco Brancati wrote the commentaries on this folio during his lessons
with Manuel Gomes in 1637.


protection of their colleagues in the provinces, the heaviest academic bur-
den fell on the former, while the latter could content themselves with
training in Christian vocabulary and a basic knowledge of the Confucian
canon. Such skills sufficed for proselytizing, mostly among plebeians, and
dealing with the growing numbers of Christians.
For all that, the cost of shortening the missionary training program was
high. As the Jesuits reduced the amount of time they devoted to study,
they necessarily diminished their capacity to compose books in Chinese.
From Ricci’s day until the middle of the seventeenth century, almost all of
the missionaries were involved in the production of apologetic, devo-
tional, or scientific texts. For example, his multiple responsibilities not-
withstanding, Manuel Dias the younger, who served as Visitor in 1614–15
and as Vice-Provincial from 1623 until 1635 and again from 1650 until
1654, composed a number of Chinese works during his years in Jiangxi,
Fujian, and Zhejiang. In addition to his fourteen-volume Shengjing zhijie
(1636–1642), a partial translation of a set of commentaries on the gospel
readings used during the liturgical year, Dias wrote an explanation of the
Ten Commandments (Tianzhu shengjiao shijie zhiquan, 1659); a treatise
responding to doubts about Christian doctrine (Taiyi lun); a text on as-
tronomy called Catechism on the Heavens (Tianwen lüe, 1615); an explana-
tion of the Nestorian stele unearthed near Xi’an and of other Chris-
tian monuments found in Fujian, titled Tang jingjiao beisong zhengquan
(Commentary on the Laudatory Inscription of the Luminous Religion
of the Tang, 1644); and a translation of Luis de Granada’s version of
Contemptus Mundi (Qingshi jinshu).83 According to his necrology, Dias
also left a translation of Granada’s catechism and an explanation of the
sacraments in terms of scholastic theology among other works “which
could not be printed owing to the poverty of the mission.”84
Later generations of priests would, on the whole, have neither the
training nor the opportunity for sustaining this sort of publication effort.
The general decline in the numbers of converts from the elite meant that
there were fewer patrons willing to shoulder the costs of printing new
books, and the general penury of the mission meant that the Jesuits could
not afford to pay for more than the reprinting of old works or the publica-
tion of short new tracts. But the fact that the missionaries were no longer
trained in composition was also an integral factor. An overview of the
surviving collections of texts written by the Jesuits in Chinese reveals
that after the Canton exile, the production of new works (both religious
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and scientific) was largely monopolized by the priests at Peking, such as
Ferdinand Verbiest and Lodovico Buglio. The court Jesuits enjoyed sig-
nificant advantages over their brethren in the provinces. Their sphere of
activity was circumscribed, that is, largely limited to the capital city itself,
and they had comparatively few pastoral burdens. Moreover, those priests
who worked at the Astronomical Bureau carried out tasks that were more
academic in nature than those shouldered by their confreres, whose pasto-
ral duties gradually consumed ever greater amounts of time.
One should not assume that the overall decrease in the number of com-
positions meant that later generations of Jesuits were somehow incapable
of comprehending indigenous thought or expressing their own concep-
tions in Chinese. Instead, this trend reflected the evolving demands of the
Vice-Province as the focus of the missionaries’ efforts shifted away from
currying favor among the elite and toward evangelizing the ranks of the
unlettered. The cases of Philippe Couplet and Prospero Intorcetta, both
of whom reached China in 1659 and worked in the Jiangnan region, cast
light on the language program experienced by the generation of mission-
aries who followed that of Francesco Brancati. Couplet’s first assignment
was the study of language at Ganzhou in Jiangxi Province under the di-
rection of Brother António Fernandes (1620–1670). The most pressing
demands on the missionaries at that residence were pastoral, and local
superior Jacques Le Faure was no doubt pleased that after only one year
Couplet was “well enough versed in the language to attend to baptisms,
confessions, and preaching.”85 Once he had acquired linguistic skills suf-
ficient for handling duties of this type, the Flemish Jesuit could take up
the study of the Confucian canon. Although it remains unclear if Fernandes
instructed Couplet as Gomes taught Brancati, there is no doubt that Cou-
plet was familiar with the Four Books and the Documents Classic; after all,
he compiled a chronology of Chinese dynasties titled Tabula Chronologica
Monarchiae Sinicae and was one of the translators who worked on the
Latin edition of the Four Books, called Confucius Sinarum Philosophus.
As Couplet was studying at Ganzhou, Prospero Intorcetta was also en-
gaged in a language program not far away at Jianchang. He took lessons
from Vice-Provincial Inácio da Costa, at the same residence where Costa
himself had learned from Gaspar Ferreira. The Vice-Provincial had es-
corted Intorcetta to Jianchang with the purpose of introducing him to the
local mandarins and Christians—another invaluable aspect of the “ap-
prenticeship” style of teaching—and instructing him in native philoso-
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Learning the Language of Birds F


[To view this image, refer to  
the print version of this title.] 
 
 
 


phy.86 While undergoing instruction, Intorcetta kept detailed notes on his
readings. A synopsis of what he had learned about the Four Books was
published in 1662. This text, called The Meaning of Chinese Wisdom as ex-
plained by Fr. Ignacio da Costa, Portuguese, of the Society of Jesus, and made
public by Fr. Prospero Intorcetta, Sicilian, of the same Society, contained
Latin versions of the Great Learning and the Analects along with Costa’s
glosses and key terms in romanization. It was the first translation of selec-
tions from the Sishu to be printed in a European language.87
Perhaps the most telling aspect of Intorcetta’s Chinese Wisdom is that it
was intended to serve as a teaching tool. According to its dedicatory pref-
ace, Intorcetta published his explanation of the two texts for the use of
other missionaries not just in China but throughout the Confucian cul-
tural sphere, from Southeast Asia to Korea. Ostensibly, his purpose was to
encourage his peers to engage with the dominant native philosophical tra-
dition so that they could see how well it conformed to “natural law and
Christian wisdom.”88 Yet it is undeniable that the strains felt by the Vice-
Province spurred the Jesuits to produce textual substitutes for the personal
training they had previously afforded new recruits. When they were con-
fronted with the pressing need to keep the Society’s residences occupied,
the superiors of the Vice-Province took the option of sending recent arriv-
als off to mission stations by themselves after no more than a crash course
in speaking Chinese.
The new recruits could be issued a copy of Intorcetta’s Sapientia Sinica
or the translation he produced of the Doctrine of the Mean, printed with
the title Sinarum Scientia Politico-Moralis (Canton, 1667; Goa, 1670), and
told to learn about Chinese philosophy on their own. Before the 1660s,
the Jesuits were not yet in such dire straits. The Calendar Case of 1664
and their ensuing confinement at Canton spared them from having to
confront this issue for the better part of a decade. That circumstances
would drive them to adopt such a drastic expedient, however, remained all
too distinct a possibility in the offing.
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Learning the Language of Birds F
Frontispiece to the first printed translation into a Western language of part of the
Confucian Four Books. From Prospero Intorcetta, Sapientia Sinica (Jianchang, 1662).


“The Only Brief Way”
The Jesuits who left their confinement at Canton in 1671 found them-
selves overwhelmed by pastoral burdens created by the expansion of the
Christian communities in their absence. The years that followed saw the
situation grow worse, as few recruits arrived to replace the dead or join the
efforts of the living. If there was a silver lining to this cloud, however, it
was that not much of the veterans’ time had to be devoted to teaching
new confreres.
When new missionaries did arrive, the Vice-Province turned to its stan-
dard pool of instructors, its coadjutors. By the 1680s some of these were
poised to be ordained as priests, but one responsibility still rested squarely
on their shoulders: after completing the novitiate, they were to serve as
“masters of Chinese language and letters” for the new missionaries.89 The
men selected for ordination were all literati; presumably they were more
qualified teachers than the “sons of Macau” who had learned the Chinese
classics from Europeans. After all, the first component of the language
program that was stripped from the course outlined in the ratio studiorum
was the time spent with a Chinese master. So the Vice-Province’s reliance
on its first Chinese priests to provide language instruction represents a sig-
nificant change of course. Indeed, so important was Paulo Banhes Wan
Qiyuan considered for this task that when he mysteriously disappeared in
1691, other Jesuits voiced their greatest concerns not so much over his de-
serting his mission station as over his decamping before he had finished
teaching Francisco Pinto.90
To be sure, the Chinese men who became Jesuit priests in 1688 were
not the only ones responsible for language teaching. Senior missionaries
trained younger men who were to assist them in their old age. This was
the case with Jean Valat, the French superior of the Jinan residence in
Shandong Province, who died in 1696 at the venerable age of eighty-two.
During the last decade of his life Valat was assisted by a number of young
recruits, turning his residence into a “school from which issued excellent
missionaries.”91 Among his pupils were men such as Miguel de Amaral,
Francisco Pinto, and Antonio Faglia (1663–1706), all of whom spent time
as missionaries in Shandong or North Zhili provinces.
If there was anywhere in the Vice-Province where the need to study
language and literature had grown over the course of the seventeenth cen-
tury, it was Peking. Not only were the court Jesuits obliged to master the
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essentials of Chinese philosophy, but their high visibility and frequent
dealings with the Kangxi emperor and members of the imperial clan of
the Qing dynasty meant that they also had to learn the Manchu tongue,
and the Vice-Province contracted with Manchu masters and Chinese mas-
ters to take care of facets of instruction that were dispensed with in
the provinces.92 But despite the favorable conditions for language train-
ing found at Peking, it was no easy task for newly arrived Jesuits to
match the standards of erudition set by such predecessors as Johann Adam
Schall and Ferdinand Verbiest. That it was hard going indeed can be sur-
mised from the words of Antoine Thomas, who reported within a year of
arriving in China in 1686 that he was pushing himself because unless he
demonstrated dexterity in handling “the Chinese characters and books,”
the mandarins would find him “incapable of filling the place of Father
Verbiest.”93 Peking missionaries such as Thomas appear to have spent so
much time on their studies that they ignored other duties. During an in-
spection of the capital’s residences in 1689, Jean Valat felt compelled to re-
mind the court Jesuits to engage actively with their spiritual charges, cit-
ing the benefits of greater interaction “both for helping to learn the
language quickly and for increasing the fervor and level of instruction of
the Christians.”94
In the two decades from the 1670s until the 1690s, the Vice-Province
received so few recruits that the training of provincial missionaries was
gradually reduced to the bare minimum, that is, a short course in spoken
guanhua supplemented by readings in the Four Books. Even when a fresh
influx of priests arrived in China (between 1688 and 1697 the number
of priests in the Vice-Province jumped from nineteen to forty-two), the
challenges posed by the coming of the French Jesuits and members of
other religious orders were too serious for the Vice-Province to con-
template holding language classes in the manner prescribed by the ratio
studiorum.95 Of paramount importance for the mission were the tasks of
occupying the territories claimed by Jesuits in the past and assuming a
pastoral presence in as many Christian communities as possible to impede
the arrival of competitors. The situation of the Vice-Province was precari-
ous, giving it little choice but to accelerate its training program, abandon-
ing all pretense of matching the formation given to previous generations
of missionaries, including those who had learned Chinese in little over a
year.
New solutions to the old problem were not lacking, however. An excel-
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lent example of the Vice-Province’s effort to expedite the formation of its
new members is a text written by José Monteiro around the turn of the
eighteenth century. As a clear indication of its purpose, Monteiro called
his work “The True and Only Brief Method for Quickly Learning to
Speak the Chinese Language which by its nature is very difficult . . . For
Use in Training Missionaries.”96 Its contents were a grammar textbook,
vocabulary lists, and confessional manual, and its primary objective was to
enable priests to dispense with those aspects of training that did not di-
rectly pertain to their pastoral responsibilities, the duties of baptizing and
confessing Christians in particular. A newly arrived missionary armed
with this type of book could head directly to a provincial mission station
where the number of Christians was greatest and the demand for the sac-
raments most intense. He would learn how to speak (not read or write)
guanhua by memorizing the grammatical patterns and romanized terms
found in the text and would have at his disposal a number of stock
phrases for exhorting his spiritual charges to piety, but little else.
Monteiro was well aware of the predicaments faced by the Vice-Prov-
ince around 1700. As a missionary in Fuzhou and the representative of the
bishop of Macau in Fujian Province, he was on the front line of the Jesu-
its’ battles against the Vicars Apostolic, an experience that no doubt con-
tributed to his appointment to the post of Vice-Provincial from 1698 until
1702 and again from 1704 to 1707. His text appears to have been the clos-
est that the China Jesuits ever came to producing an arte for guanhua after
the fashion of João Rodrigues’s Arte Breve da Lingoa Iapoa.97
To be sure, Monteiro observed a degree of brevity that makes
Rodrigues’s work seem prolix by comparison. The “prologue” to the “True
and Only Brief Way” consists of a single sentence: “The Chinese language
which is called Mandarin is like Latin among the Europeans since it is
universally used in this most vast empire, and people who understand this
language can be found in all parts of it.” From here, Monteiro plunges
into explanations of the sounds used in guanhua with reference to con-
temporary Portuguese and Latin pronunciation. He remarks that Manda-
rin “totally excludes the use of the letters B, D, and R,” and that no Chi-
nese word begins with the letters A or E: “To say Amen, the Chinese says
yá mên; and to say Ecclesia, they say Nge ke le si ya.”98 Monteiro includes
a description of the five tones of contemporary guanhua and an explana-
tion of his system of romanization. The last parts of the grammar section
present rules and examples for pronouns, adverbs, adjectives, and quanti-
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ties, with lists of romanized terms attached. A dialogue between a Chinese
Christian and a Jesuit completes this section (partially cited earlier), serv-
ing as a grammar exercise and an additional vocabulary list.
It is no small irony that more than a century after the Society of Jesus
had begun training men in Chinese language and thought, Monteiro con-
cluded that the “True and Only Brief Way” for becoming fluent quickly
was by studying vocabulary lists, much in the manner of Michele Ruggieri
and Matteo Ricci. To be sure, the Jesuits had always made use of such lists
and had always counted on the ability of their brethren to memorize large
numbers of terms. Yet Monteiro’s method is crude and the phrases it pres-
ents are inelegant. His “Brief Way” leads not to fluency but to stilted
speech. That said, however, it must be granted that a newly arrived mis-
sionary needed to know what to say to the members of his flock if he was
to act as a pastor. In this instructional text, Christian vocabulary occupies
a central place by necessity, and readers are exposed to such basic elements
of doctrine as “God created heaven, earth, and all things from nothing =
TiÃn chù çùm vû sÃm tiÃn tì vàn vÝ . . . Our merits are not enough for
reaching eternal glory = Ngò mèn tiè cÉm laô pù keù tÝ tiÃn tâm tiÝ fá
. . . Even the Devil obeys God = Liên má guèi tìm TiÃn chù mìm.”99
Monteiro also treats such topics as the obligations of a Christian, the attri-
butes of the rational soul, and other spiritual matters.
In addition, he directs attention to more practical, mundane affairs.
Since his text was designed for use by men going off to residences by
themselves, it necessarily had to teach recruits the words needed for man-
aging a domestic economy. In the sections dealing with residences, one
finds short phrases for addressing concerns to household servants. More
expressions of this type can be found in the section relating to the kitchen
and cooking, since it is clear that the missionaries always delegated this
task to others. To give the appearance of fluency, Monteiro’s text suggests,
priests had to be able to complain about the food they were served:
This meat is not cooked enough = Chècò já má chù tÝ làn
It is half raw, or half cooked = Já puòn sÃm, puòn xá
These greens have no taste = Chècò çài má ùi
They are too salty = Chècò çài hiên tÝ kìn
I cannot chew these greens = Chècò çài yÁo pù tùm
The rice is poorly cooked = Fàn pù làn; pù xá, má chù te xá
The rice has stones in it = Fàn yeù xÝ teû
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This tea was made a while ago = Chècò châ pào tÝ kieù leaò
You used too few leaves = Fàm châ yÝ xaò leaò
This tea is poorly made = Chècò châ xaò pú haò100
Subsequent sections of Monteiro’s manual take the reader from inside the
mission station to society at large. Here, the organizing themes include
clothing, family relationships, studies, provinces and cities, levels of of-
ficialdom, courts and law, soldiers and arms, professions, and food. One
particularly useful part of the text for solitary missionaries is devoted
to the human body and health, instructing sick Jesuits on the terms to use
when describing their symptoms to Chinese doctors. The last part of
the text, occupying a quarter of the whole work, consists of a series of dia-
logues in the form of a confessional manual. From this manual of casu-
istry, readers not only gained insight into how to interrogate penitents in
the confessional but also learned which sins were typical of Chinese
Christians, at least according to Monteiro.101
If one were to judge by Monteiro’s “True and Only Brief Way” alone, it
would appear that under the pressure of external challenges, the Jesuits
had abandoned teaching their newly arrived colleagues the foundations of
Chinese philosophy. Other sources, however, suggest that a connection
between the missionaries and the Four Books persisted, even if it was the
faintest shadow of what it had been in the halcyon days of the first half of
the seventeenth century. One vocabulary list of Chinese terms contains at
its end a short section titled “Sentences from the Sishu that a Priest should
know in order to use them when arguing with Chinese Heathens.” Here,
on five sheets of paper, one finds excerpts from the Great Learning and the
Doctrine of the Mean, transcribed in Chinese characters and Portuguese
romanizations and accompanied by an explanation in Portuguese.102
The arguments presented in these “Sentences,” based on those found in
other Jesuit writings, were designed to show that the Confucian canon
contained implicit and explicit references to the Christian God. To give
but one example, the citations begin with the first line of the Great
Learning: “What the Great Learning teaches, is—to illustrate illustrious
virtue; to renovate the people; and to rest in the highest excellence.”103 Ac-
cording to the attached gloss, one can “clearly deduce” from this phrase
that there is “an ultimate end where man must come to rest.” Such is the
case, the argument continues, “because it says that the true law and doc-
trine consist in making one able by following his understanding and natu-
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ral inspiration to reach and rest at his ultimate end, which is the greatest
goodness.” The argument concludes that this suma bondade, translated
earlier as “highest excellence,” can be none other than God.104 It is hard to
believe that a missionary would willingly have entered into a debate with
a Chinese literatus armed only with a handful of bons mots, but perhaps
this was an indication of the priests’ level of confidence in their religious
message—or of their degree of resignation at the slim prospects of gaining
new literati converts without more powerful rhetorical weapons at their
disposal.
The use of “brief” methods for learning Chinese or lists of “choice
phrases” plucked from the Confucian canon may have enabled the men of
the Vice-Province to muster some form of control over their territorial
gains in the mission field, but these were in reality a factor that would
later contribute to the collapse of their enterprise. The veteran missionar-
ies who had arrived in China before the 1690s knew that by reducing the
duration of the language training afforded to recent arrivals, the mission
inched closer to the edge of the precipice. From their perspective, the
1692 Edicts of Toleration notwithstanding, the Jesuits had to maintain
their public image as erudite men trained in both Western and Chi-
nese thought. For the mission to continue to expand, it had to be staffed
by men who were familiar with native intellectual traditions, in addition
to the pastoral skills required for managing communities of Christians
spread over large areas.
Perhaps the most important factor of this equation for continued
growth was the need to produce new texts in Chinese rather than rely on
the books that had been reprinted time and again since the 1620s and
1630s. But without a system for teaching new missionaries the elements of
Chinese written style, it was unlikely that new texts would be written to
fill this void. The Vice-Province’s superiors were aware of this problem,
and they sought to resolve it by issuing exhortations to their subordinates,
since they had no other means available. After a visit to the mission’s resi-
dences in the early 1690s, Visitor Francisco Nogueira sent out a series of
directives that gave voice to the veteran Jesuits’ complaints that their
younger confreres did “not apply themselves to the study of Chinese let-
ters” and that as a result few among them could “write a letter or compose
Chinese books,” with obvious negative consequences for the mission.
Nogueira asserted that the priests of old offered a good example on this
score, since of their number “only one can be found who did not write
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and compose.” In an attempt to spur his subordinates to greater diligence,
he urged them not to content themselves with “only learning the lan-
guage” but recommended that they take up the study of Chinese philoso-
phy. As if to underscore the importance of this order, Nogueira requested
that the Vice-Provincial inform him of the names of those who were un-
able to commit themselves to this task so he could transfer them else-
where, “where the study of letters is not so necessary.”105
This call for a return to the academic virtues of times past came too late
for the Vice-Province to stave off the encroachment of its rivals from
other orders and from Rome. In fact, Francisco Nogueira’s exhortation to
study the Chinese classics was a glaring understatement of the challenges
facing the mission in the years around 1700. It would have required a su-
perhuman effort for the Jesuits to meet their crushing pastoral obligations
and still have time left for engaging in intellectual pursuits.
Yet in the view of at least one missionary, if the Jesuits had committed
themselves to delving more deeply into native philosophical texts, they
might have found there the ammunition necessary for fighting their bat-
tles over the Chinese Rites. This was the opinion voiced by José Soares,
one of the missionaries at the imperial court, in 1705, after he had realized
what the potential consequences of the Tournon legation might be. At the
very moment when the Jesuits confronted the need to uncover sufficient
evidence from indigenous sources to defend their interpretations of the
rites, few men were up to the task, Soares lamented. He made particular
reference to the documents of the communities of Chinese Jews and Mus-
lims that would give credence to the Jesuits’ claim that the terms Tian and
Shangdi referred to the Semitic God—airtight proof, sure to convince
their detractors that the Jing Tian inscriptions displayed in the churches
of the Vice-Province were not idolatrous. “There is no doubt,” Soares
wrote, “that in this most vast and most ancient empire there are many
other monuments of the True Vigil where they speak of the true God. But
the missionaries’ want of curiosity means that we lack many documents
through which we could dispel the ill-founded scruples of our adversar-
ies.”106 By 1705, however, Tournon was already on his way to Asia with or-
ders from the papacy to bring the China Jesuits to heel. After that point,
the degree of the Jesuits’ engagement with Chinese language and Confu-
cian thought would become irrelevant, since none of their communica-
tion skills would suffice to convince either the emperors or the popes who
would judge their fate.
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8
The Business of Conversion
O
ne day in the early spring of 1604, while João Soeiro was
recovering from a serious spell of consumption in Nanchang, he received
a visit from a young man from neighboring Fujian Province. Despite the
fact that the youth’s family, the Lin clan, was renowned for its members’
successes in the civil service examinations, and even though his father was
a wealthy mandarin, he had spent his days like the prodigal son, “in
youthful pleasures, traveling about and seeking to learn the alchemy for
making silver.” Drawn to Soeiro because of a clock at the Nanchang resi-
dence, Lin spoke to the missionary about mathematics. The Jesuit slipped
various references to the Law of God into their discussion—“as he and
the rest of the priests usually do”—and gradually they turned to the
subject of religion. Seeing that Lin was becoming interested, Soeiro pre-
sented him with a catechism “to mull over slowly.” During the following
weeks, the man made daily visits to Soeiro, peppering him with questions
about Christianity. So content was he with the Jesuit’s responses that he
“stamped his feet and clapped his hands, carried away by his pleasure.”1
When Manuel Dias the elder arrived at Nanchang as part of an inspec-
tion tour later that year, Lin took the opportunity to ask the missionaries
more questions about their religion. According to the Jesuits, his doubts
mirrored those of the Prophet Jeremiah, who asked “quare via impiorum
prosperatur, etc.”2 Lin wanted to know why God gave “good things to the
bad, and bad things to the good,” and why He did not kill the evildoers
who wrought so much destruction on the world. “Why,” he asked, “did


God create those who He knew would not be saved?” Lin also inquired
about good works. What use were they if God had foreknowledge of those
who were destined for heaven and those who were slated for hell? The
prospective convert also sought to know why the Almighty did not make
all of His creatures virtuous and save Himself the trouble of being of-
fended by some of them. More mundanely, Lin was puzzled about the Je-
suits’ insistence that sick individuals pray to God for healing. “If every-
thing happens according to His will, how can we ask Him for health since
it was He who gave us the illness in the first place?” Moreover, Lin contin-
ued, why did God grant health to those who prayed and made sacrifices at
Buddhist or Daoist temples? Their recovery would obviously be attri-
buted to the deities they worshipped, and not to the Lord of Heaven. Al-
though their account of Lin’s doubts does not include the missionaries’ re-
joinders, they asserted that their answers “went down so well with him,
showing that he had as much good sense as skill in coming up with
doubts.”3
This is an evocative if somewhat quirky vignette of the process of con-
version. To be sure, most of the Jesuits’ colloquies with people who pre-
sented similar doubts did not end in the same way as the Nanchang mis-
sionaries’ talks with Lin, that is, with baptism—though Lin himself was
obliged to present his sons for baptism in his stead since he had two wives
and was thus barred from the sacrament. Yet for those who chose to
adopt Christianity, especially before the middle of the seventeenth cen-
tury, when Tianzhu jiao began to be transmitted mainly through kinship
networks, the road to conversion commenced with an encounter. In Lin’s
case, it came when he sought out Soeiro’s clock, but for others it occurred
when they perused the Jesuits’ publications or spoke with one of their
compatriots who was a Christian. For still others, the process began when
they first happened to meet a missionary, either at a Jesuit residence or
while a priest conducted a countryside mission.
Once attracted to the missionary’s religious message, the prospective
convert was drawn into a dialogue about the teachings, obligations, and
practices of followers of the Lord of Heaven. These discussions, the Jesuits
hoped, would end with baptism and the integration of another neophyte
into the ranks of the mission church. But just how did this process take
place? How did the missionaries introduce their teachings to the Chinese?
What did they say or do to persuade men and women in the late Ming
and early Qing periods to accept their religion? What rituals or parapher-
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nalia did the Jesuits employ to make their faith understood to individuals
whose experience of religion was vastly different from the European one?
And, once these men and women decided to become Christians, what
signs or symbols did they adopt to identify themselves as adherents of
Tianzhu jiao? In short, how did the Jesuits involved in the “business of
conversions” purvey their “divine merchandise” in China?4
Despite the wealth of detail found in the mission’s archival legacy about
the march of the faith in China—including accounts of miraculous heal-
ings, virtuous Christians, confounded Buddhists, vexed Daoists, and, on
occasion, converts “gone cold”—one finds few specific answers to these
questions. This lack of information is unsurprising, given that the most
vivid descriptions of missionary work are found in the Vice-Province’s
Annual Letters, documents destined primarily for internal consumption
within the Society of Jesus. It appears that among the members of the or-
der, a common understanding of the norms and practices of missionar-
ies—be they at the Mughal court, in the forests of the Amazon, or in the
villages just beyond the city walls of Lisbon or Évora—was taken for
granted, since all Jesuits were to have served at least some months as mis-
sionaries during their novitiate training. In that context, the Annual Let-
ters from overseas had two purposes: to transmit information about the
temporal and spiritual status of each of the Society’s enterprises and to of-
fer examples of the virtues of the missionaries and their Christians. Never-
theless, in the lulls of this celebratory symphony, the Vice-Province’s
scribes inserted enough descriptions of their proselytizing routines to
paint a reasonably clear picture of the China Jesuits’ commonly used tech-
niques.
Before we commence a discussion of those methods, it is important to
clarify two points. First, the term “missionary strategy” has been used in a
number of different ways by other scholars, with a general—although,
from the view of this study, mistaken—emphasis on conversion “from the
top down.”5 The overwhelming majority of Chinese Christians were of
plebeian extraction. In light of that fact and other reasons already dis-
cussed, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Jesuits developed
techniques they considered to be efficacious for converting members of
the lower ranks of society. The following analysis deals with the methods
they used to claim this type of convert, leaving aside the more familiar
theme of Jesuit interactions with the elite through books or learned dis-
cussions.
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The Business of Conversion F


A second issue has to do with the character of the sources used in this
analysis. It would be foolish to attempt to draw definite conclusions
solely from missionary testimonials about why lower-class people living
in late Ming and early Qing China chose to become Christians or how
they conceived of their religious identity. Those who have treated well-
documented members of the elite, such as Xu Guangqi or Yang Tingyun,
have found it difficult enough to answer such questions.6 Scholarship on
Chinese sources has as yet failed to come up with more than a handful of
substantial descriptions of popular Chinese Christianity that are not fil-
tered through an elite lens.7 Whoever wants to find out how missionaries
interacted with prospective converts and discover what practices endowed
Chinese Christians with a recognizable religious identity must therefore
turn to Jesuit sources. To be sure, missionary accounts often reveal more
about the Jesuits than about their converts, but for present purposes
that is precisely why they are useful. One confronted with the silence of
the majority of Chinese Catholics hopes to learn something from a few
stage whispers of their missionary pastors regarding the course of conver-
sion and the form of Catholic practice—even if that something is no
more than what Jesuit direction intended it to be rather than what it ac-
tually was.
Holy Men from the Distant West
For all his immense importance to the history of the China mission, the
towering figure of Matteo Ricci left behind a mixed legacy for his succes-
sors, not to speak of historians. The mark that he impressed on the Soci-
ety’s enterprise was so deep that scholars can be forgiven for confusing his
personal actions with his confreres’ strategies in China or with Jesuit
evangelization methods in general. To be sure, Ricci’s dealings with Ming
era individuals were multifaceted, and it is difficult to separate his reli-
gious tactics clearly from his political or humanistic ones. Yet most of the
things for which the mission founder has been remembered fall clearly
into the category of diplomatic or intellectual actions rather than what are
properly termed missionary activities. This is not to say that Ricci did not
propagate Christianity while he was in China or to imply that he did not
dedicate all his actions ad maiorem Dei gloriam. Rather, it is to redefine
terms by pointing out that his most important legacy (both to his con-
temporaries and to modern scholars) was that he made it possible for his
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successors to propagate the gospel. Nicolas Trigault’s adaptation of Ricci’s
diaries, titled De Christiana Expeditione apud Sinas, had a lot to say about
the Italian’s progress toward Peking, his dealings with mandarins, and his
writings in Chinese. There are, however, far fewer passages in this book or
in other sources from the mission’s first decades that speak in more than
summary fashion of the methods used by its founding father to persuade
his interlocutors to submit to baptism.
Yet the lack of a clearly explicated missionary method is not a con-
firmation of its absence in actuality. On the contrary, Ricci’s actions,
whether political, religious, or intellectual, can be understood as a pas-
sive means of promoting Christianity by drawing others to himself, and
Trigault was quite clear in casting Ricci’s actions as integral parts of the
journey of the faith into China. But in contrast to the more active means
of proselytization that his successors would employ, the mission founder
worked slowly in building up an attractive image of himself and the other
Jesuit representatives of Tianzhu jiao. It is no surprise that even that most
trenchant critic of Ricci’s methods, the Japan missionary João Rodrigues,
acknowledged that the Italian’s “great fame for sanctity” led many Chinese
to an awareness of the Christian message. In the “dense thicket of super-
stition” that was the Ming empire, Rodrigues wrote after Ricci’s death in
1610, it was hard to find anyone “who had not heard of him, or does not
speak of him as if he were a saint.” Wafts of Ricci’s “sweet odor of virtue”
had spread across China, carried about on the currents of correspondence
linking literati who had met him and drifting from province to province
in the books that he wrote on scientific, religious, or moral themes.8
The passive method employed by Ricci and his confreres in the mis-
sion’s first decades centered on the Jesuits’ urban residences. From the
start, the priests sought to make their houses poles of attraction for curios-
ity seekers. Their residences were places for distributing Christian tracts,
sites for viewing scientific instruments and other European objects, and
vantages for observing the priests while they conducted Catholic rituals.
The missionaries hoped that after being exposed to the composite image
of Christianity that was presented there, interested Chinese would alert
others and spread news of this foreign religion. Willing players of the Je-
suits’ game did not take long to appear. By the summer months of 1584,
the priests at Zhaoqing had already been joined by a literatus from Fujian
Province. When this man, who was christened Paul, left for his home in
early December that year on his way to Peking, he carried copies of
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Michele Ruggieri’s first catechism with him. As he parted company with
the Jesuits, he promised “to make his wife and children Christians, and to
teach the Law of God to others.”9
As ever more individuals visited the missionaries at their residences in
Guangdong Province, news of the priests spread throughout southern
China. By the early 1590s, the constant movement of officials, traders, and
other travelers—just the type most readily drawn to the Jesuits—along
the empire’s main north-south axis of communication had carried Ricci’s
renown into Jiangxi Province. The mission founder recorded how a mer-
chant from that region had come to the border town of Nanxiong on
business and learned from an acquaintance of the “foreign priests who had
come from the West.” Given his ripe age of sixty, the merchant had been
encouraged to seek out Ricci at Shaozhou to prepare himself for the here-
after by learning “the true road for reaching heaven.” Upon meeting the
missionaries, he listened to a presentation of Christian doctrine and de-
cided to remain with the priests for a month. During his stay, the mer-
chant was baptized Joseph and even participated, under Ricci’s direction,
in the meditations prescribed by Ignatius Loyola in the Spiritual Exer-
cises.10 The Jesuit’s use of the central work of Ignatian spirituality within a
month of first explaining the essence of Christianity set the bar for neo-
phyte devotions high—far too high, it would appear, since other mission-
aries made only sparing use of this method of pious introspection among
their Chinese Christians in later years.
By the late 1590s, Ricci had shifted the focus of his actions to making
his way to Peking. On his journey north, he left the residences that he had
founded in Shaozhou, Nanchang, and Nanjing in the hands of his con-
freres. Reassured by Ricci’s fame—but perhaps frustrated by the general
lack of conversions in almost two decades of work—these men began to
develop more active evangelization tactics to complement the passive
strategy employed at their residences. Instead of waiting for the curious to
seek them out, some of the missionaries decided to sally forth with their
religious message. To be sure, there was no absolute division between pas-
sive and active missionary tactics, and all of the Jesuits would use a combi-
nation of both methods depending on their target audience. In any case,
the transition to public preaching was a risky venture, since it involved al-
tering the image of the demure scholar that Ricci had cultivated for him-
self and his colleagues. In order to stave off potential repercussions, the
first priests to use more active strategies first deployed them in social set-
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tings different from those of their urban haunts. They headed to the
countryside, where members of the elite were few. There, the symbolic
power of the wandering holy man (especially when he was visually linked
by his dress to the political power of the mandarins) was greater than it
was in the cities, where temples and other religious institutions abounded.
Niccolò Longobardo pioneered the active method in the villages
around Shaozhou in the summer of 1599. Building on an initial experi-
ence from the previous autumn, when he had gone to confess a sick
Christian in a village, Longobardo developed a way of going on a “spiri-
tual hunt.”11 First, he would send one of his assistants (a coadjutor or a
catechist) ahead to a given hamlet to alert its inhabitants to the arrival of
“a preacher from the distant West who would speak to them about reli-
gious matters.” The assistant would encourage the villagers to gather be-
fore a table at which Longobardo sat. The Jesuit then began to announce
“the true religion of God, the Lord of Heaven, through whom alone man
could achieve salvation.” After this preamble, he explained each of the
Ten Commandments. The final step in this introduction to Christianity
was to unveil a portrait of “God the Savior who had taught this holy law”
and place lighted candles and incense by it.12 One should not underesti-
mate the power of these ritual gestures, especially among the unlettered,
who were as apt to be impressed by Longobardo’s studied Chinese-style
gravitas as by the theatricality of his presentation.
Once he had introduced the Supreme Being, Longobardo would ex-
hort the villagers to abandon their other religious habits and accept initia-
tion as Christians. To the literate few, he distributed catechetical tracts.
These individuals would also be summoned to hear the catechism from
the missionary, lessons that they would be entrusted to repeat to others.
The Jesuit conceded a further reward to these men, allowing them to be
present for parts of the mass which he celebrated on a portable altar.
When Longobardo considered his villagers sufficiently trained in the pre-
cepts of their new faith, he administered baptism. Before moving on to
the next village, the Jesuit gave his neophytes rosaries and medallions to
serve as “the spiritual arms of the militia in which they had just begun to
profess membership.”13
Longobardo’s use of words, gestures, and devotional objects stands in
marked contrast to the form of Catholicism that is typically associated
with the China Jesuits in general. The faith preached and witnessed here
is not the esoteric religion of literati converts seeking to reconcile Western
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concepts with Confucian philosophy. Rather, it is a reflection of the tangi-
ble devotions of ordinary Christians in early modern Catholic Europe. As
far as the rural folk who learned of Tianzhu jiao from an itinerant mis-
sionary such as Longobardo were concerned, Christianity was a religion
which along with the promise of salvation bore the obligation to abide by
a strict moral code. The practice of this faith consisted of frequent prayer,
typically assisted by devotional images or objects, and occasional partici-
pation in rituals. As presented by the Jesuits in Chinese villages, the basic
teachings of the Lord of Heaven were concise and simple; even children
could learn them. The missionaries, however, took on an assignment that
was far from simple: they were responsible for getting the converts to live
by the moral strictures of their adopted religion and ensuring that they
had a basic knowledge of doctrine and the primary Catholic prayers.
But even if the challenge of guaranteeing rudimentary indoctrination
for all neophytes was not an easy task, means of solving the problem were
available. Those solutions drew on the pastoral techniques employed by
the Society in Europe. After all, the China Jesuits emanated from Post-
Tridentine milieux in Catholic Europe where their order, as well as other
members of the secular and regular clergy, was engaged in a massive proj-
ect of doctrinal education among children and the unlettered. The distri-
bution of broadside doctrine primers was a common method used for in-
culcating basic prayers such as the Ave Maria and Paternoster as well as
teaching the Nicene Creed, the Seven Deadly Sins, the Corporal and Spir-
itual Works of Mercy, the Ten Commandments, and the Cardinal and
Theological Virtues.14
Taking his cue from his order’s standard practices, Longobardo distrib-
uted doctrine pamphlets to his prospective converts. Unlike the apolo-
getic treatises written for cultivated audiences by Matteo Ricci and others,
these were texts intended for less erudite segments of the population. One
of the first such manuals to be distributed widely in China was João
Soeiro’s Tianzhu shengjiao yueyan, first published circa 1600. This short
text (in some versions thirteen pages and in others seven) consisted of dia-
logues between a missionary and a prospective convert about prayers and
points of faith.15 Apparently such brief tracts achieved their purpose of en-
suring a basic level of doctrinal knowledge among the Chinese Christians
in the mission’s early years. By 1612, mission superior Longobardo insisted
that the Jesuits could not alter the Chinese wording of the prayers found
in the doctrine pamphlets, and especially not the indispensable and inal-
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terable formula used in administering the sacrament of baptism, that is,
the translation of the timeless phrase “Ego te baptizo in nomine Patris et
Filii et Spiritus Sancti.” When some of the priests began to question the
way that formula had been rendered into Chinese (according to them,
the current version contained unacceptable ambiguities about the Trin-
ity), Longobardo countered that the primers had made the true doctrine
“known to everyone.”16
To Longobardo, the assertion that all Chinese Christians had learned
their doctrine by using printed primers was proved by his experiences of
baptizing women. Few women would have been present at one of the Je-
suits’ presentations; they would have had to learn about Tianzhu jiao from
their husbands, sons, or other male relatives. With primers in hand, and
especially by using texts structured in dialogue form, Chinese men were
able to carry out the missionaries’ exhortation that all members of a
household should learn doctrine and convert. In 1602 Longobardo wrote
of how impressed he was by the way Christian men in the Shaozhou area
took to the task of indoctrinating their female relations. He described
being invited to perform women’s baptisms in the presence of their hus-
bands and relations, but only after each woman had taken a turn at recit-
ing the whole catechism from memory. After this initial recitation, candi-
dates for baptism would answer questions about “what they had heard
regarding the most important mysteries of the holy faith.” Longobardo
insisted that he was unsure what was more impressive about these encoun-
ters, the “diligence that they employ in learning and memorizing doc-
trine, as well as in practicing for this test,” or the “spirit and confidence
that they show, unafraid of being seen and examined by foreign men.”17
When all was said and done, a combination of active and passive tactics
was the best method. To be sure, even when the political situation in a
given area urged the missionaries to use caution (that is, to work in a pas-
sive fashion), they still needed to make an initial active gesture to open a
new residence. That this was the case can be seen in the account of the Je-
suits’ first visit to Shanghai. In September 1608 Lazzaro Cattaneo was
assigned to make the journey from Nanjing to the hometown of Xu
Guangqi. The Christian mandarin sent a sedan chair to meet the Jesuit at
the riverside and lodged him in his palace for three days. Clearly the pub-
lic endorsement of a local worthy paid off, for during that initial period
Cattaneo claimed that many “mandarins, as well as other literati and hon-
orable friends of Doctor Paulo,” came to visit. During the weeks that fol-
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lowed, Cattaneo stayed in Xu’s study, a small building separated from his
palace. There the Jesuit received “all manner of people,” including the city
governor, one of Xu’s close friends, who arrived “with all the solemnity
and pomp due his office.” Another group that came to visit Cattaneo were
members of the Buddhist and Daoist clergy. According to the missionary,
one high-ranking Daoist priest was “so satisfied” with the Jesuit’s message
that he intended to return to hear further elaborations on Christianity.
But instead of simply waiting for this parade of visitors to end, Cattaneo
also went about the city, “coming to the aid of those who asked for Chris-
tian doctrine and desired to be informed about the Law of God.” In two
months of exhausting effort, he claimed forty-two converts, among them
five xiucai, or minor degree holders. This success gave him “hope, with
the help of divine favor, for a copious harvest.”18
Vendors in the Spiritual Marketplace
The reference to the Buddhist and Daoist priests who came to meet
Cattaneo in Shanghai is a reminder that the China Jesuits did not work in
a vacuum. The Europeans were merely one group among many in a spiri-
tual marketplace where different teachings competed for attention. The
most intense competition in late Ming and early Qing China appears to
have taken place at the popular level, where the Jesuits squared off against
other purveyors of religious ceremonial. In a society in which rituals were
judged for their ability to channel the favor of supernatural beings or keep
them at bay, the Europeans had to devise ways of promoting their religion
in a manner that would make it appear valuable to prospective converts.
The bulk of their interactions with Buddhism and Daoism therefore took
place not in the rarefied air of cosmological discourse (especially since, on
the whole, the China Jesuits refused to enter into dialogue with these
Asian traditions and appear to have remained largely ignorant of their
complexities), but rather on the pragmatic ground of plebeian piety.19
That Christianity demanded the exclusive attention of its adherents,
instead of letting them participate in its ceremonies or not at their plea-
sure, made the Jesuits’ task doubly difficult. They knew full well that they
were not in Catholic Europe, where the combination of royal and ecclesi-
astical power enforced religious exclusivity. They were also aware that the
Ming empire presented challenges unlike those faced by their brethren
who worked in the Amazonian jungle or the baronies of the Japanese dai-
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myo. In those regions, conversions among the elite had led to forced
transformations of the religious landscape. In China, however, there was
no official religion outside of the Confucian state orthodoxy, a complex of
teachings considered atheistic by the Jesuits. Despite their connections to
the governing elite in some regions, the missionaries could summon no
coercive power to increase the size of their flocks. Instead, they had to join
in the profusion of religious traditions that existed side by side, competing
for adherents and patrons on a largely equal footing. They had to rely on
their powers of persuasion to convince prospective converts that their
teachings were better than the widespread Buddhist-Daoist-Confucian
syncretism or the popular salvationism of the Pure Land school.20 For the
Jesuits, the encounter with indigenous traditions produced no end of frus-
trations. From their perspective, a host of features on the Chinese reli-
gious landscape conspired against them in their apostolic endeavors, and
the Buddhist and Daoist clergy’s resistance was by no means the least of
the vexations that plagued them.
From the early years of the mission, the Jesuits identified the “bonzes,”
that is, Buddhist clergy, as their primary rivals. At first they seemed to be
courting a paradoxical similarity with these adversaries by dressing in gar-
ments cut after the fashion of the native religious. To be sure, Michele
Ruggieri, who was certainly aware of the ambiguity created by his use of
this type of clothing, tried to make things clear in verse. “If you ask me
about the things of the Western Paradise,” he explained, “my explanation
is not that of Buddha Sakya.”21 Matteo Ricci went a step further; on be-
coming mission superior, he abandoned any vestimentary connection be-
tween the Jesuits and the Buddhist clergy, adopting instead the garb of the
literati.
Yet this change of image did not make the missionaries’ task easier. By
enlisting the visual referents of state officials through their clothing and
attracting the curiosity of some segments of the elite, the Jesuits raised the
level of competition between themselves and their rivals. First of all, the
priests actively denounced indigenous traditions to members of the elite.
Their attempts to win friends and followers among Chinese literati thus
made them different from representatives of other minority religions. For
instance, the local Jewish and Muslim communities did not engage in
missionary efforts and largely kept their religious teachings to themselves.
And, while the leaders of millenarian cults and other secret sects did seek
adherents in popular milieux, they avoided contact with the bureaucracy
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The Business of Conversion F


for fear of persecution (although they did attract members among eu-
nuchs and yamen clerks). Therefore, by engaging with influential figures
in a quest for social legitimacy, political protection, and patronage, the Je-
suits publicly entered the lists against representatives of entrenched tradi-
tions.
The conversion of a handful of Jiangnan literati at the start of the
seventeenth century induced criticism from the indigenous clergy and
in turn incited antagonism at the popular level. The events surround-
ing Lazzaro Cattaneo’s first visit to Shanghai are a good example of how
such conflicts began. In the year before the priest’s arrival in 1608, Xu
Guangqi’s father had died. When it came time for the funeral ceremony,
Xu insisted on a Christian burial, and Cattaneo made it known that he
would not permit the presence of “either Bonzes or Tausus [Daoshi, or
Daoist priests].” Seeing how much they stood to lose by not conducting
this funeral, the native clergy “began to spread the notion that the Law of
God denied the honors and suffrages due to ancestors.” This was a power-
ful denunciation because the ritual manifestation of respect for the de-
ceased was a deeply rooted practice, one that had originated in primordial
Chinese culture and was an integral part of Chinese religion. In spite of
the displays of friendship that Cattaneo received from many quarters, he
lamented that the slanderous opinions “deterred many of those who had
wanted to hear of our Holy Law.”22
It was not only in the shadow of mandarins that the Jesuits encoun-
tered resistance to their message on religious grounds. In the countryside,
too, they clashed with established notions of sanctity and ritual power.
According to one account, individuals who had seen Niccolò Longobardo
distribute his concise doctrine primers to villagers in Guangdong Province
mocked the fact that Christianity could be “summed up on four sheets of
paper.” The brevity of the Jesuits’ teachings, these opponents claimed, was
proof that they were only “a law for foreigners.” Such brief statements
could not compare with the “the tomes of doctrines, exorcisms, and
prayers of the idols.”23 Lacking the logistical capacity to endow every mis-
sion station with weighty volumes—in Latin or other European lan-
guages, of course—on theology, philosophy, or other Western sciences,
the Jesuits could do little to confront this criticism. In sending Nicolas
Trigault to Europe in 1613, mission superior Longobardo instructed him
to acquire books to be used for “giving satisfaction to the Chinese.”24 In
the following years, the Jesuits launched a vigorous publishing effort to
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make translations of more substantial and complex explanations of Chris-
tian theology and Aristotelian philosophy available in China.
No matter what they did to respond to their critics, the Jesuits could
not negate the daunting challenges rooted in the millennial presence of
Buddhism and Daoism in China. So entrenched were these traditions in
Chinese society that seeking to cancel them out was the equivalent of at-
tempting to divorce the myriad manifestations of Christianity from early
modern European society. One of the first to express his frustration at
the built-in resistance of the Chinese religious landscape was Niccolò
Longobardo—not a surprise, since it was he who pioneered the practice of
missionizing at the popular level. This Jesuit dismissed Daoism as no
more than a grab bag of divining and fortune-telling techniques. The per-
vasive presence of Buddhism was his primary stumbling block.
Longobardo gave four reasons for his opinion that “the adoration of the
pagodes,” that is, Buddhist deities or their representations, would be more
difficult to uproot in China than in other “heathen lands.” First, he la-
mented, icons of the Buddhist pantheon could be found everywhere. The
Chinese “surpass all other heathens” in idolatry, he claimed, given that the
pagodes abounded not only in temples but also in private homes; one
could not even find a “boat or shack” that lacked them.25 Longobardo’s
other three reasons were more closely linked to the intertwining of Confu-
cian thought and popular Buddhism. He noted that many individuals
were reluctant to abandon the religion of their forebears to adopt Tianzhu
jiao. In popular circles, devotional objects were considered family patri-
mony that could not be alienated without provoking scandal. Another
reason why native traditions presented such a challenge was, according to
Longobardo, that the moral standards of Buddhism and Confucianism
ran parallel to each other. Moreover, since “the false gods lived well in
moral terms” and were known for their miracles, it proved hard to de-
nounce them convincingly. Comparing his task to that of early Christian
apologists, he asserted that the Jesuits would make more converts if they
could only illustrate Christianity’s moral superiority. What was needed
were stories about Buddhist deities involving them in “plundering, adul-
teries, and other abominations,” activities for which the gods of Greek
and Roman antiquity were notorious. The Jesuit’s final reason touched
on the imperial approbation with which Buddhism had been received
in China during the later Han dynasty. Referring to the patronage be-
stowed on the Buddhist community at Luoyang in Henan Province by the
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The Business of Conversion F


Huan emperor (r. AD 147–167), Longobardo informed his readers that
the pagodes had come to China “sixteen hundred years ago from India or
Siam.” And since Buddhism had been accepted by a sovereign, it could
only be “completely removed by order of the king.”26 Taking his cue from
this precedent, Longobardo later suggested that the Jesuits, too, seek an
acknowledgment of Tianzhu jiao from the Wanli emperor.27
These were not the only impediments to the spread of Christianity in
China. The Jesuits were aware that certain elements of their religion did
little to attract new members. In fact, as Erik Zürcher has noted, the im-
ported religion’s moral strictures were considered to be particularly rigor-
ous by Chinese standards.28 The key sticking point appears to have been
the missionaries’ insistence on observance of the Ten Commandments.
For instance, when Feliciano da Silva traveled to Hangzhou in 1612 at the
insistence of Li Zhizao and Yang Tingyun, he recorded only eighteen
baptisms. (Four of these were of abandoned babies.) Attempting to ex-
plain this paucity of conversions in that year’s Annual Letter, Longobardo
claimed that despite the public endorsement of Christianity by influential
men such as Li and Yang, “many come to bite, but few end up taking the
bait of life.” He went on to explain that he felt the Chinese were sincere in
their desire to “love our God, since they truly understand Him to be great
and incomparably better than any of their idols.” But they lost interest,
Longobardo said, when they understood Christianity’s moral strictures.
All of a sudden they would find “many difficulties that they had not previ-
ously envisioned.” Among the negative consequences of conversion as far
as they were concerned was that they would have to “dismiss their concu-
bines, lose the profits of usury, abandon the use of fortune-telling, cast out
their idols.” In short, they resisted having “to order their lives according to
our precepts.”29
The primary obstacle to Christianizing wealthy individuals was polyg-
amy. The practice of taking more than one wife was the most serious of
the “impediments of the rich” that kept members of the late Ming elite
from baptism. Here again, the Jesuits ran up against Chinese standards of
moral behavior. The Confucian conception of filial piety put a premium
on the birth of (male) heirs in every family and permitted polygamy for
that reason. But the missionaries’ attitude on this transgression of the
Sixth Commandment was inflexible. Prospective converts had to send all
but one wife away before they could be baptized. This is not to say, how-
ever, that the early Jesuits did not try to find a loophole in canon law that
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might permit more members of the elite to convert. In 1592, only a decade
after the mission had been founded, Francesco de Petris asked the Soci-
ety’s Superior General to secure a papal dispensation for baptizing such
men. Those who promised to restrict themselves to having carnal relations
with only one of their wives should not be obliged to send the others away
before being admitted to the sacrament, de Petris argued. If no such pro-
vision was granted, he claimed, “the door to the faith will remain locked
for a great multitude of people.”30 Yet no dispensation was forthcoming
from Rome. The Jesuits resigned themselves to the prospect that few
wealthy Chinese would become Christians and duly celebrated those men
who were “freed of their impediments” and subsequently baptized.31
At the popular level, the exclusivity of the Jesuits’ message directly con-
flicted with the pervasive religious pragmatism of the Chinese peasantry.
To be sure, many individuals were drawn to the missionaries because they
appeared to be powerful masters of ritual whose presence added to the ex-
isting plethora of means for dealing with the supernatural. Yet these
men and women chafed at the Jesuits’ denunciations of Buddhism and
Daoism, and resisted the obligation that prospective converts rid them-
selves of any traces of “idolatry.” This meant having one’s pagodes con-
signed to the flames at the time of baptism. No doubt the missionaries’
audacity in making this stipulation gave pause to many. Surely the mis-
sionary cannot be serious in his demands, the people of the Shaozhou area
evidently thought when Longobardo came to preach among them. Writ-
ing about his rural missions in 1602, he reported that some of the villagers
were initially taken by the gospel of Shangdi (this was a decade before the
terms controversy). They willingly accepted images of the Almighty to
put in their domestic oratories, but arranged their pagodes “like vassals,
setting them in some other corner of the house without throwing them
out.” When these individuals found out that the “truly converted” did not
want these objects “even in the filthiest part of their homes,” the spread
of Christianity slowed. Little by little, Longobardo complained, “they
backed off, shutting their ears to this new doctrine.”32
A further aspect of plebeian religiosity that vexed the Jesuits was the
tradition of zhai, fasting or abstinence. This practice differed from the
Catholic obligation to abstain from eating meat during certain periods of
the year. While in Confucian thought it was related to notions of ritual
purity when performing sacrifices, at the popular level, abstention from
meat was linked to the Buddhist commandment that proscribed killing.
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Members of sectarian groups were especially known for their commit-
ment to fasting.33 So widespread was the practice of zhai that the Jesuits
were bound to confront it sooner or later. As early as 1592 Francesco
de Petris complained to his superiors about the prevalence of fasting.34
Another account from a missionary in the Nanjing area, written a de-
cade later, commented on the many peasants who observed a Buddhist-
inspired fast. Some practiced zhai because “they believed that they would
gain pardon for their sins,” while others maintained the hope that “they
would be reborn in rich households.” Everyone, this report asserted,
thought that the killing of animals was sinful.35
The missionaries objected not to fasting per se but to the beliefs that
drove Chinese men and women to fast. In order to ensure that their con-
verts understood the reasons for the Christian fasting regime, the Jesuits
insisted that all prospective converts who practiced zhai had to eat meat in
anticipation of baptism. Forcing converts to change the eating habits they
had maintained for years was a formidable challenge. Many were dis-
suaded from converting when faced with this fundamental alteration of
their lifestyle, not to mention the less foreseeable consequences of adher-
ing to a new religion. The Jesuits were not afraid of employing ruses to
test the resolve of their catechumens. During a visit to the countryside
near Nanjing, one missionary cajoled a farmer who had been a Buddhist
devotee into breaking his fast by a show of deference. When the man in-
vited the priest for a meal, he offered his guest “delicacies of meat and
fish” while reserving “herbs and beans” for himself. Espying a golden op-
portunity, the Jesuit begged his host to partake of the food first. The man
was cornered, “thinking up a thousand courtesies and solutions” to avoid
eating the meat or fish. After all, it had been “thirty years” since he had
last eaten such things. With “his hand trembling and his face pale,”
though, the farmer gave in, taking a nibble, and submitted to baptism
soon after.36
“What Happens on These Missions”
In the mid-1620s, after seven years in seclusion, the Jesuits fanned out
across the Ming empire with renewed vigor. Looking back over the his-
tory of their mission since its inception, they moved decisively to expand
their activities in the provinces where they had seen the most significant
growth in the number of converts. Taking their cue from the techniques
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elaborated by veteran missionaries such as Niccolò Longobardo, the men
of the Vice-Province took their religious message to rural towns and vil-
lages. It came as no surprise to them that after initial efforts to publicize
Christianity in new areas, they began to see the size of their flocks expand.
While their Annual Letters attributed this turn of events to the hand of
the Almighty, the Jesuits were aware that the collective experience of fifty
years of proselytizing in China had engendered some techniques that were
more useful than others for propagating Tianzhu jiao.
That the Jesuits should have found their evangelization tactics too rou-
tine to record in detail for posterity dismays the historian of the Society’s
overseas missions. It is only in rare instances that the missionaries ex-
plained in writing how they worked among plebeian Chinese. One of the
exceptions is the 1627 Annual Letter composed by Manuel Dias the youn-
ger, who found it desirable to transcribe an account of a missionary’s visit to
a rural area, claiming that “eyewitness testimony” would help readers gain a
better understanding of “what happens on these missions.”37 Dias’s source
was a letter from Rodrigo de Figueiredo to a confrere stationed at Jiading
(possibly João Fróis), which describes a journey to several hamlets in the
periphery of Ningbo in Zhejiang Province. This trip lasted “eighteen or
nineteen days” and resulted in eighty baptisms. Moreover, Figueiredo re-
corded with satisfaction, “many hundreds” more had listened to his expo-
sitions of doctrine and resolved to submit to baptism at a later date, and
“many thousands” were made aware of Tianzhu jiao for the first time.38
The occasion for Figueiredo’s visit to that corner of Zhejiang arose
when a Christian tailor surnamed Wang stopped at the Hangzhou mis-
sion station on his way home from Peking. The man had been baptized
Francisco by the court Jesuits, who assured him that a priest would be
willing to travel with him in order to baptize his household and kin.
When the convert showed up in Hangzhou in March 1627 with his bap-
tismal certificate in hand, he insisted that one of the Jesuits accom-
pany him to his home district. After overcoming his initial reluctance,
Figueiredo went along to see if the man could make good on his promise
to introduce him to “enough people to wear him out preaching.”39 While
this individual appears to have been more persistent than most of the Je-
suits’ converts who clamored for pastoral attention, such invitations often
determined the areas where the Jesuits would evangelize. By acceding to
such demands, they gained local contacts who could serve, if necessary, as
translators between guanhua and the regional dialect.
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The Business of Conversion F


[To view this image, refer to  
the print version of this title.] 
 
 
 


Before leaving Hangzhou, Figueiredo assembled the necessary para-
phernalia for carrying out his proselytizing activities. Along with the
equipment he used for saying mass, he packed a set of devotional objects
and images, doctrine primers, prayer books, and other writings in Chi-
nese. The kit that Figueiredo put together followed the rules that had
been issued to members of the Vice-Province in 1624, titled “Reminder
for the Priests Who Go on Brief Missions to Attend to the Christians.”40
These directives instructed missionaries to travel with baptismal and litur-
gical apparatuses, as well as “rosaries and paper images to distribute to
those they baptize.” Their baggage was also to include devotional objects,
such as nominas, veronicas, or agnus dei, for converts who were perceived
as being more fervent than the average, or were simply of higher social
standing. It goes without saying that these rules also encouraged mission-
aries to bring Jesuit texts, and to “hand them out readily, since they
greatly help give notice of the Law of God.” In order to facilitate their
proselytizing work among the unlettered, the missionaries were also ad-
vised to bring texts with engravings of biblical or devotional scenes, such
as João da Rocha’s Song nianzhu guicheng, or “Rules for Reciting the
Rosary” (first edition 1619). Another exemplary tract was Giulio Aleni’s
Tianzhu jiangsheng chuxiang jingjie, or “Illustrated Explanation of the In-
carnation of the Lord of Heaven,” which first appeared in 1637.
When Figueiredo left for the Ningbo district, he sailed from Hangzhou
on one of the innumerable boats that swarmed on the rivers of the Ming
empire. This was a common mode of travel for the missionaries, especially
in coastal areas. In the mountains and plains of northern China, though,
the Jesuits often relied on mules or donkeys for transportation. On occa-
sion, they even employed sedan chairs—even if admissions of this indul-
gent mode of travel are rarely found in Annual Letters. The Jesuits were
not afraid to admit, however, that they were usually accompanied by do-
mestics who acted as porters, or even bodyguards.41 To be sure, priests
who decided to forgo these conveniences soon earned a reputation for
sanctity, one validated by their displays of poverty and humility. Such was
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The Business of Conversion F
Woodcut print of Christ with orb of the universe. Frontispiece to Giulio Aleni, Illus-
trated Explanation of the Incarnation of the Lord of Heaven (Tianzhu jiangsheng
chuxiang jingjie), 1637. This image is similar to the standard depictions of Jesus used
in China by the Jesuits.


the case of Étienne Faber, who traveled for years in the remote fastness of
southern Shaanxi Province. According to his necrology, Faber carried his
“sweet cargo of holy images” on his back and his baggage atop a mule or
in a wheelbarrow. And when fording rivers, he would not take off his
shoes, but always waded in the water fully dressed, “never letting his ser-
vants or his Christians carry him across on their shoulders or in their
arms.”42
Figueiredo’s first stop in the virgin mission territory of coastal Zhejiang
was one of that area’s numerous clusters of farmhouses, each belonging to
a different clan. His guide led him to a schoolhouse, where the Jesuit
found a crowd of young boys and a master. Soon after, Figueiredo was vis-
ited by a group of literati who engaged him in a discussion on the Teach-
ings of the Lord of Heaven and asked if he had “any images of that god.”
Selecting an appropriately impressive painted scroll, the missionary un-
rolled it and with tailor Wang’s help hung it on a wall. According to the
Jesuit’s account, at that moment “all of the boys and their master began to
kowtow and pray to it.” They chanted in unison, “We adore you Lord, we
ask you to help us, please grant us understanding for our studies.” Taking
advantage of this propitious beginning, the next day Figueiredo set up an
altar beneath the image, replete with an ornate altar cloth and a separate
table for burning incense.43
By unrolling his devotional painting in public with a certain degree of
pomp, Figueiredo was employing a standard Jesuit tactic for inaugurating
a mission. Given the profusion of Buddhist and Daoist iconography in
China, the Jesuits knew the ritual power that images possessed, especially
among rustics. Very few specimens of this type of art have survived, al-
though missionary sources contain numerous descriptions of the visual re-
sources that the Jesuits employed.44 For instance, when Inácio Lobo in-
vited villagers to a clan temple on a coastal island near Fujian in 1637, he
set up an altar with candles and incense before unveiling a devotional
painting. After giving a brief talk on the afterlife, he revealed a portrait of
Jesus that was “well painted and adorned with red silk.” According to this
account, the villagers were so struck by seeing “such a beautiful painting
that they did not take their eyes off it.”45
As this last remark suggests, the combination of Western painting tech-
niques and subject matter made the Jesuits’ images noteworthy in China.
But what did they represent? According to missionary sources, the most
commonly used subjects were the Savior (a half-length portrait of Christ
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with orb and scepter) and the Virgin and Child (based on the portrait at-
tributed to Saint Luke, called the Salus Populi Romani, at the basilica of
Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome). It appears that the Jesuits did not em-
ploy depictions of the Crucifixion when explaining Christian teachings to
new audiences, something that their missionary rivals never tired of re-
peating. This is not to say that they omitted the Passion from their
preaching—as evinced by the fact that the crucifix was a topos in Chinese
anti-Christian literature—but rather they felt that the use of such images
was not the best introduction to their religious message. In fact, the rules
issued for the Vice-Province in 1621 temporarily barred the missionaries
from displaying the crucifix “in public or in cubicles in places where hea-
thens enter.”46 The Jesuits ran into enough problems even without re-
course to images sure to scandalize the uninitiated. When Gaspar Ferreira
traveled around North Zhili in 1607, his detractors circulated a rumor
that his depiction of the Lord of Heaven was his own portrait or that of
one of his ancestors. “Under the pretext of teaching a new law,” the accu-
sation ran, Ferreira himself was “seeking to be adored.”47
But to return to Rodrigo de Figueiredo. Once he had his altar set up
and his devotional painting displayed, he commenced proselytizing. His
exotic presence was reason enough for many men and women to come
visit him. According to Figueiredo, everyone “for a league and a half
around” was aware of his arrival, and all stopped in at his lodgings for a
look. The Jesuit made sure to keep his cubicle door open at all times, even
during his meals, noting how his numerous callers “noticed everything
about him and enjoyed seeing it all.” Once a crowd had gathered, he
stood before his altar, prepared to discourse on Christianity. Before he
launched into his standard six-point lecture, he kowtowed repeatedly be-
fore the image of the Savior and invited his listeners to do the same. Then
Figueiredo told them about the portrait, explaining that it depicted “the
Creator of everything, neither a pagode nor an idol, but the true and living
God.” The Jesuit informed his audience about how this Supreme Being
created heaven and earth, and enjoined them “not to worship other gods
or to fear demons, but to serve the one true Lord.”48
Figueiredo then moved into an explanation of the human condition,
giving an account of the fall of the rebel angels, the creation of Adam and
Eve, and the reasons for the Incarnation. He outlined the central myster-
ies of the faith and gave “a brief explanation of the Credo.” After sketch-
ing the theological foundations of Christianity, he introduced his listeners
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to the Ten Commandments. Figueiredo’s penultimate point identified the
prerequisites for baptism, such as the “will to follow this Law, and contri-
tion for one’s sins.” He concluded by intoning the Jesuits’ habitual refrain
about the altruistic reasons for their self-exile in China, explaining that his
only ambition was “to propose these truths.” He insisted that he could
guarantee nothing beyond “blessings in the other life” to those who
adopted Christianity and warned them that they “would not lack labors
in this one,” although they could count on divine succor in their travails
or at least on “the patience to suffer them with joy and merit.” After is-
suing this disclaimer, Figueiredo provided instruction on the principal
Catholic prayers, on how to use rosary beads, and on the proper display of
the nominas and images given to neophytes.49
After making an initial presentation, missionaries naturally concen-
trated on those men and women who desired baptism. Figueiredo re-
ported that he spent an average of two days in each hamlet he visited. In-
culcating Catholic obligations and practices in neophytes consumed most
of this time. To facilitate this task he used a doctrine primer, most likely
the catechism in dialogue form by João da Rocha called Tianzhu shengjiao
qimeng.50 This text was a Chinese adaptation of Christian Doctrine by the
Portuguese Jesuit theologian Marcos Jorge (1524–1571), a standard work
translated into several languages.51 By presenting catechumens with a
scripted dialogue on the basic prayers and points of the faith, the mission-
aries could make sure that their converts knew a minimum of doctrine
prior to receiving baptism—even if their catechumens showed little en-
gagement with their adopted religion beyond parroting the stock phrases
of a doctrine primer.
Even children could repeat the simple phrases found in catechetical di-
alogues, a characteristic that made such texts invaluable. Long years of
experience in Europe, as well as in China, had taught the Jesuits the bene-
fits of enlisting the young as a fifth column in their army of indoctri-
nation. Children could be counted upon to repeat prayers and mimic
ritual gestures to their mothers or other women who were prevented
from dealing directly with the missionaries because of gender taboos. Al-
though Figueiredo appears to have faced far fewer difficulties in address-
ing women personally in the backwaters of Zhejiang Province than in
Hangzhou, he still relied on their children as effective, albeit unwitting,
catechists. He lingered in one hamlet for the sole purpose of “perfecting
some children in the prayers”; in another, he made “the children repeat
the prayers many times.”52
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Figueiredo illustrated his technique of using children to teach their par-
ents in three episodes from his trip. In one, he described how he had a
room full of men and women trying to learn prayers and make the sign of
the cross. “The children, who had learned them quicker,” he reported,
“walked around laughing at their mothers and fathers.” Upon seeing that
his mother made the sign of the cross incorrectly, one boy darted to her
side to guide her hand.53 In a different village, children who had heard
Figueiredo’s presentation of the prayers “walked around repeating them,
some out of mockery, some because they found those unknown words to
be amusing.”54 Yet another story relates how a group of children were
scolded for making “that invocation of the pagodes, O Mi To Fe,” at a simi-
lar gathering.55 To Figueiredo’s delight, their parents instructed them to
use the Jesuits’ preferred phrase, “Lord of Heaven help me [Tianzhu jiu
wo].” The salutary ejaculation having been impressed on the children
in this way, “they did not cease making this holy invocation while the les-
son lasted.”56
“See How It Slips into Lies”
Rodrigo de Figueiredo gave a candid assessment of his mission to the
Zhejiang countryside. He claimed few baptisms and reported incidents in
which his tactics had failed to produce the desired result. On occasion he
won converts by the sheer force of his presence and his theatrical ritual
gestures. Most of the time, however, Figueiredo relied on his rhetorical
skills in attempting to undo native beliefs and supplant them with Chris-
tian teachings. The work of persuasion was not easy. The Jesuits were
aware that their Christian truths were not self-evident to the Chinese.
How, then, did they enter into dialogue with illiterate or semiliterate rus-
tics on religious matters? They had to undermine the foundations of pop-
ular belief by employing an appropriate register of discourse that obeyed
their interlocutors’ patterns of logic. The missionaries’ primary challenge
was therefore to argue against Buddhism and Daoism as they were under-
stood in plebeian circles; it was, as Figueiredo put it, to explain “why one
should not adore the pagodes, or observe the fasts, or practice any of the
other superstitions which fill these lands.”57
There is no doubt that the China Jesuits were skilled in the art of per-
suasion. Rhetoric and casuistry were the Society’s celebrated talents. All of
the Vice-Province’s missionaries had been schooled in their order’s logic,
rhetoric, and theology curricula. But this did not guarantee that they
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The Business of Conversion F


could successfully engage with the modes of thought of the unlettered.
Priests such as Figueiredo, who had spent over ten years studying Latin
grammar and rhetoric, Aristotelian philosophy, and Thomistic theology,
were surely able to best any peasant in a test of wits. Such subtlety was of
little use, however, since it would only drive away potential neophytes,
embarrassed and frustrated. The fact that Figueiredo was a talented ora-
tor, whose gift for preaching almost won him a permanent assignment to
the viceregal chapel in Goa instead of a journey to China, was surely help-
ful.58 But it appears that the principal skill called on for dealing with peas-
ants was an ability to make comparisons and draw analogies without rely-
ing, as one missionary noted, “on philosophical demonstrations that they
cannot penetrate or understand.”59
The Jesuits structured their presentations of Christian doctrine around
the figure of Tianzhu, the Lord of Heaven. Figueiredo’s starting point for
his introduction to Christian doctrine echoed the Book of Genesis, but
“the beginning” that he described was radically different from the Chinese
understanding of the creation of the world. There was no single creation
myth in traditional China, but rather a set of complementary stories relat-
ing to primordial events.60 The Jesuits confronted these myths head-on.
Lacking demonstrable proof of their own version of the story, they instead
sought to reveal the perceived inconsistencies of the Chinese accounts.
Figueiredo’s report offers an especially revealing look at how the mis-
sionaries dealt with Chinese cosmogony. He transcribed a debate that he
had had with a farmer who expressed doubts about his teachings in the
presence of other peasants. The Jesuit claimed that this individual was the
most perceptive of his clan, although he conceded that this particular
group was “so learned” that it amazed him. The farmer’s first doubt came
with Figueiredo’s dismissal of the story of Pangu, the offspring of Yin and
Yang, or the heavenly chiseler, who carved the two spheres of heaven and
earth from the primordial mass.61
The farmer said to me: “You say that this god of yours made heaven
and earth. So what did our Pangu do? Our books say that he was the
one who divided them, but it seems that for you there was no
Pangu.”
I responded: “Not a whiff of him. The one who made earth and
separated it from heaven was the True God whom I preach to you.”
To this he responded: “Wait right there, I am going to bring you a
book where you will see this very clearly.” And shortly after leaving,
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he returned with a handwritten ledger. He began to read the begin-
ning of the General Chronicle where it claims that before there was
heaven or earth, Pangu divided them.62
I then said to him: “I have seen other larger and more respected
books than the one you have there which say the same thing, and I
believe those books as much as yours. Wasn’t your book written by a
man? Couldn’t he lie?”
He responded to me very sharply, grabbing the doctrine primer
that was on the table: “That’s quite a tall order. So you’d have me be-
lieve what it says in this little book when you don’t want me to be-
lieve what my book says or those other larger books?”
To which I replied: “If you think that book is big, than you should
believe what it says in my other book here which is much bigger
than all of yours” and pointed to one of our books that happened to
be on the table.63
After reaching an impasse on the size and relative importance of their
books, Figueiredo tried a different tack. He attempted to poke holes in
the Pangu story and other Chinese creationist traditions, drawing analo-
gies with the realities of peasant life.
I continued: “Doesn’t that book of yours say that Pangu was a man?”
“Yes,” replied the farmer.
And I: “See then how it slips into lies. Tell me, when this man
divided heaven and earth, he was first on earth, and if so, how did
he get to heaven? Either that, or he was first in heaven, and if so,
how did he get to earth to divide them? And if he was between one
and the other, how was he not crushed to death? Moreover, if you
cannot split a log in three days, how could one man split heaven and
earth?” To this, I added: “And what did this man eat while he
worked?”
The farmer was silenced with these reasons, and his companions
stared at him. But since he was confident, he flipped ahead in his
book and said: “So, you also don’t believe that the Three Kings cre-
ated all things?”64
“True,” I said, “because that is a bigger lie, since it follows that if
these kings were men like us and lived before things were created,
they would have died of hunger before they had begun to create any-
thing.”
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The Business of Conversion F


At this point, one of the farmer’s friends helped him: “They ate
grass and fruit.”
To which I replied: “That would have been enough for them not
to starve, but whoever made the grass and fruit they ate would have
made everything else, so the Three Kings wouldn’t have been neces-
sary for making them.”
With this, his companion went mute while the farmer returned to
his book, saying: “So what can you tell me of the ten suns that ap-
peared during the time of King Yao?”65
“It’s a lie,” I said, “because if you read further on you will find that
when this happened, this king sent an archer to shoot them down
with an arrow, making them disappear. It may seem to you unlikely
that there ever could have been such an archer, but if you look fur-
ther on in your book you will find that the same king sent a valiant
man to tie up the winds in a grove so they wouldn’t blow down so
many houses and trees.”66
Upon hearing this he began to think that I knew more about his
books than he had thought at first. He then closed his tome, saying:
“You are right in what you say, but by the same token I want to
know where your god was and what he ate while he created heaven
and earth?”
“You ask most beautifully,” I said, “and very perceptively, but first
you will want to know who this god of mine is, because you will
learn that since he doesn’t have a body, he doesn’t need space and
doesn’t eat or drink.” And so I went on telling him such things, ex-
plaining how God is unique and true, and must be adored rather
than the pagodes.67
No sooner had Figueiredo touched on the subject of the Chinese pan-
theon than his discussion with the farmer turned to basic Buddhist be-
liefs. Since these deities were held to be especially powerful—in plebeian
circles and not, as the Jesuits claimed, among the literati, who refused to
worship “the pagodes, or adore any supreme lord other than heaven and
earth”—the missionaries faced the challenge of proving their impotence
and Tianzhu’s strength.68 When Figueiredo denounced the pagodes, his in-
terlocutor immediately retorted: “What can you tell me of the miracles
they have done? Or the power that they have to help those who serve
them or harm those who spurn them?” Here the missionary encountered
one of the difficulties enumerated by Niccolò Longobardo in discussing
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popular Buddhism, namely, the moral rectitude of its gods. Clearly aware
of this problem, Figueiredo questioned the pagodes’ power to mete out
punishment. He told the farmer that he had traveled thousands of miles
from Portugal to China with the sole purpose of “denouncing them, and
persuading people to stop worshipping them.” If the Chinese gods were
omniscient and judgmental, the Jesuit claimed, why did they not do him
harm “in the midst of so many dangers in strange lands?” Although he ad-
mitted that this argument was “very crude,” Figueiredo was content that
it cooled another of the farmer’s doubts.69
The transmigration of souls, or reincarnation, was another belief fos-
tered by popular Buddhism that frustrated the missionaries. One well-
worn argument they deployed in rural areas was aimed squarely at the
sensibilities of peasants and their routine dealings with animals. The Jesu-
its asked their interlocutors to consider the variety of living things of all
sorts and species, and to ponder the fact that “thousands of living crea-
tures swarmed in one dead body alone.” It was evident that these beings
far outnumbered humans, the missionaries contended; therefore it was not
possible for human souls to occupy all of those animals. Following similar
logic, the Jesuits attacked the vegetarianism of Buddhist devotees. They
argued that it was futile to try to improve one’s chances of being reborn as
a “docile animal,” such as a cow or a horse. The missionaries argued that
the limited number of such animals and the fact that they were herbivores
meant that their souls would never be condemned to descend the chain of
being. It was therefore useless for any human to observe a vegetarian diet
solely in the hope of attaining such a prized reincarnation.70
The farmer who challenged Figueiredo does not appear to have been
satisfied with the priest’s explanations. He wanted to know why the Lord
of Heaven created so many different creatures if not for the purpose of
punishing or rewarding humans.
He said: “You say that God created everything, but what about the
tigers and wolves that devastate our fields, or the rats and other ver-
min that we have? What purpose do they serve? Why did God create
them?”
He asked this question because I had asked him: “If pigs, fish, and
the other things in the world were useless, as the bonzes say, what
other reason would God have had for creating them if not to be
food?”
I answered that his doubt was not an easy one but I freed him
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The Business of Conversion F


from it without difficulty. We were . . . in a farmer’s house filled with
a thousand gadgets and tools needed for his profession. Pointing to
them, I said: “Look at all of those things there. I’ll have you know
that yesterday I was wondering what they could be used for and
nothing came to mind. I’m sure that since you know all about farm-
ing, you’ll laugh at my ignorance.”
He was greatly pleased by my saying that I didn’t know how those
tools were used. I added: “But I never thought that they didn’t have a
purpose, because why would the owner of the house have them if
they didn’t?” Then I told him to wait a moment, and opened up one
of the drawers on my portable desk. I took out a host press that I had
brought with me for sealing letters and asked him if he could tell me
what it was, or what purpose it served.
He laughed at the idea that such a thing had a function. So I re-
sponded: “Either you think it is useless or, despite the fact that you
don’t know what it is, you think I had a reason for bringing it here?”
“That’s right,” he said.
I answered: “Then you should accept that God did not make his
creatures, as you said, in vain. Rather, they do not lack benefits or
uses in the world just because you don’t know which ones they are.
They may even have numerous benefits or important uses.”71
It goes without saying that the work of destroying native beliefs by us-
ing simple logic caused problems for the missionaries. The notion of a
single omnipotent God was perhaps more readily understandable to Chi-
nese peasants than other points of Tianzhu jiao. Figueiredo said nothing
in his report to deny this, noting instead that the same farmer who had
raised so many doubts was particularly puzzled by the ideas of virgin birth
and clerical celibacy. He pressed the Jesuit to tell him who Jesus’ father
was, and if Mary was vilified for her shameful pregnancy. “Who would
take care of a girl like this,” he asked. “Who would keep her and feed
her?” The priest was no doubt relieved when the farmer desisted, admit-
ting that he “could not fathom such mysteries.”72 Figueiredo stood on
firmer ground with his response to the farmer’s questions as to why he did
not have a house or a wife. He invoked his vocation as a missionary: “Do
you think I could have brought a wife and a house with me the way I’ve
come here, roaming about the world?”73
Not only did the peasants react to some tenets of Christianity with in-
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credulity, but also at times they chafed at the moral strictures of the Ten
Commandments. The version of Christian morality preached by the Jesu-
its was rigorous by Chinese standards. Whereas the Sixth Commandment
stood in the way of many members of the elite who kept concubines,
other prohibitions dissuaded peasants from submitting to baptism. Such
was the case with the farmer in Figueiredo’s story. He admitted to the Je-
suit that while he was “resolved not to believe in the idols or worship
them any longer,” he held back from converting when he learned of the
Second Commandment. The farmer informed Figueiredo that he would
be unable to avoid offending Tianzhu, since at times he was obliged to
swear oaths at temples. One of the farmer’s colleagues likewise demurred,
admitting that he had “some affairs with merchandise that were not com-
patible with the Commandments.” It seems that the Jesuit heard many
such comments—to the point, he claimed, where his servants became de-
spondent “upon seeing so little fruit for so much work.”74
Forging a Chinese Christian Identity
Rodrigo de Figueiredo claimed to have made eighty new Christians dur-
ing his trip to Ningbo district. That is, he administered eighty baptisms.
It is unlikely that these men and women learned more than the rudiments
of Tianzhu jiao in the short weeks the missionary spent among them.
Having decided to submit to baptism, however, they had to assume a new
and largely unknown religious identity. By studying prayers, acquiring de-
votional objects or other symbols of their adopted faith, and joining a
larger community of believers, they became recognizable as Christians to
their peers and their pastors. One illustration of the tentative beginnings
of this process of identity formation comes in Figueiredo’s account of the
final hours of preparation before he administered baptism to a group of
villagers:
I have been in this house for two days now. At the other end of the
table where I write these words, the owner of the house is reading
over the prayers that I taught him in a doctrine primer. His son, who
learned them more quickly, is doing the same for the women in the
house next door. . . . In the morning, Palm Sunday, I am to give
them baptism, and I do not know how many people there will be.
There are lots of children in this house. Just now they are grabbing
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The Business of Conversion F


my arms and saying, “Master, teach us,” and so I shall repeat the
prayers together with them.75
In addition to learning basic Christian prayers, prospective converts
were required to show their resolve to abandon their previous beliefs by
making an act of contrition. According to the 1621 rules issued to the na-
scent Vice-Province, all baptismal candidates were to be examined on
their knowledge of the central Christian teachings as well as their degree
of remorse at their past practices.76 There existed indigenous traditions of
declaring repentance (the Confucian-inspired “self-indictment” or “self-
reproach” treatises written by late Ming literati are an example) that
smoothed the introduction of such demands by the Jesuits.77 In discours-
ing to his catechumens on the value of Christian statements of contrition,
Figueiredo underscored their use in channeling the grace of baptism more
effectively. The missionary spoke of one woman who made an exuberant
display of remorse by beating her breast so harshly that all those who were
present “were obliged to tell her to stop.”78
Perhaps the most dramatic moment on the path to baptism traced by
the China Jesuits was the destruction of non-Christian devotional objects.
Consignment to the flames was the prescribed fate for statues, scrolls,
books, and other objects proper to Buddhist or Daoist piety. Annual Let-
ters from the Vice-Province are filled with accounts of Christian jubilation
at these burnings. Figueiredo gives a good example. When one catechu-
men showed up at the Jesuit’s door with a large sack, the priest thought at
first that it might be a gift of rice. When it was revealed to contain a hoard
of Buddhist objects, including a “very expensive doctrine manual,” the
missionary handed the sack to the children of the house where he was
staying. “They entertained themselves,” Figueiredo wrote, “by burning it
all with as much glee as a group of schoolboys from Macau would have
displayed.”79
To be sure, encouraging public burnings of religious objects was risky
business. In order to avoid sparking new persecutions, Visitor André
Palmeiro instructed his subordinates in 1629 to urge their neophytes to
discretion. Restraint was needed on the part of catechumens and mission-
aries alike to lower the level of commotion caused when they torched “the
pagodes, books, and other superstitious things at the time of conversion.”80
It does not appear, however, that the Visitor’s injunction had much effect
on tempering the zeal of either the Jesuits or their followers, since the
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pyres raged unabated. For example, Simão da Cunha described how he
was summoned by a group of Christians in upland Fujian Province in
1653 to oversee the destruction of their pagodes. “Not even on the feast of
Saint John”—a reference to the Midsummer Eve bonfires of his home-
land—“is so much wood burned in the streets of Portugal.”81 After a rural
mission in Jiangxi Province in 1688, Manuel Mendes reported that the
practice continued. When his converts offered him their wooden statues,
he passed them on to his cooks for use as firewood. By the end of his stay
in one town, Mendes claimed to have assembled “a beautiful mound of
heads” as well as devotional books and other objects. So large was his trove
that “it appeared that the devil made several shipments to deceive these
poor people.” Naturally, Mendes ordered his trophies to be burned.82
In contrast to the level of detail that Rodrigo de Figueiredo lavished on
the proselytizing process in his 1628 account, he gave little information
about how he administered baptism. Other missionaries were similarly
tight-lipped on this topic. Insights into the way this ceremony was per-
formed in China must therefore be extracted from the compendia of rules
issued by the Vice-Province’s superiors. The Jesuits were forced to adapt
the various ritual gestures that typically accompanied baptisms in Europe
to conform to Chinese cultural and gender taboos. While the Latin for-
mula for baptizing remained the same one prescribed by the Roman Rit-
ual, missionaries were warned against touching the newly baptized, espe-
cially the women. For instance, at the point in the ceremony where the
priest handed salt to a female catechumen, he was instructed to have her
husband, parents, or godparents make this gesture. In similar fashion, the
missionaries were enjoined to omit the part of the ritual where spittle was
applied to the nose and ears of adults, “since they find it very strange.”83
As one would expect in a ritual of religious initiation, one of the cli-
mactic moments came with the bestowal of a new name. Upon comple-
tion of the baptismal ceremony, the priest would issue each neophyte a
slip of red paper with his or her Christian name written on it.84 Here the
European appellation was transposed into its Chinese phonetic equiva-
lent; “Miguel” became “Mi-ke-er,” and so forth. To ensure that the mis-
sionaries’ rendition of Christian names into Chinese followed a uniform
standard, in 1629 Visitor André Palmeiro ordered that his subordinates
produce a common list of saints’ names. He also insisted that every priest
keep a baptismal roll, recording in both Portuguese and Chinese the name
of the baptized as well as the date of the ceremony and the names of their
317
The Business of Conversion F


godparents. Palmeiro considered it desirable for the missionaries to ap-
point godparents for each catechumen. But in light of the fact that these
were often recent converts themselves, the Visitor noted that they need
not be told of their obligation to ensure the indoctrination of their spiri-
tual kin.85
Those who submitted to baptism also received new devotional objects
from the missionaries. After working so hard to destroy the outward signs
of their converts’ previous beliefs, the Jesuits felt obliged to replace them
with some tangible means of religious expression. They were aided by the
customs fostered by popular religiosity in Catholic Europe, where all
manner of devotional objects were employed. Many of the images, rosa-
ries, nominas, veronicas, and agnus dei that they distributed to their con-
verts were similar, at least superficially, to the Buddhist and Daoist objects
that the Jesuits so readily threw into the fire. The missionaries, of course,
were aware of this fact and made a good thing of it; they were glad that
their devotional objects fit so readily into the symbolic context of Chinese
religious practice. For example, in one of the numerous accounts of the
adoption of Christian paraphernalia by neophytes found in the Jesuits’
correspondence, Simão da Cunha described a convert who showed up at
his baptism wearing Buddhist beads around his neck. “Now he wears the
beads of the Holy Law,” wrote the Portuguese missionary in 1653, “and
with a beautiful cross attached to them, he preaches in his town.”86
Evidently the Chinese Christians believed their devotional objects to
have considerable power for warding off evil, healing the sick, and driving
away demons. The Vice-Province’s Annual Letters are replete with ac-
counts of miraculous events that occurred with the timely imposition of
these talismans. Chinese Christian writings from the first half of the sev-
enteenth century contain similar episodes, confirming that the missionar-
ies’ flocks invested their devotional objects with great importance.87 One
report from Zhejiang Province in the 1620s tells of a man who brought
“an image of the Savior, a few crosses, and some printed names of Jesus”
to his home to replace his pagodes. For three nights after he installed these
new icons in his house, the neophyte heard loud noises of stomping feet
at midnight. It was as if a crowd were storming out of his house. To the
Christians in the area, this was nothing other than the devil tramping off,
now that “a new lord, stronger than he, ruled the house.”88 In another re-
port, António de Gouvea told of a fire that was about to consume a village
near Changshu in the Jiangnan region in 1636. As the flames began to lick
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E building the church


the walls of a neophyte’s house, the pious owner risked all to hang an ag-
nus dei from the rafters. “The respect that the fire showed was marvel-
ous,” writes Gouvea. “All the nearby houses burned down, leaving only
the Christian’s house standing.”89
Even if ironclad logic characterized the Jesuits’ doctrine presentations,
as their reports intimate, it is likely that many Chinese peasants adopted
Christianity for no other reason than the perceived power of the new reli-
gion’s devotional objects. The sheer quantity of accounts of the magic per-
formed by rosary beads, nominas, holy water, and other paraphernalia
suggests that these items played an increasingly important role in spread-
ing Tianzhu jiao in popular circles from the 1630s onward. For example,
António de Gouvea reported in 1636 that after “seeing some of his Chris-
tian neighbors praying the rosary before an image of the Savior,” a boy
from Nanjing expressed the wish to be baptized. His parents would not
permit it. Soon after, the boy fell ill and, in a state of delirium, insisted
that devils had come to carry him off. It was only after he managed to in-
voke “the holy name of Tianzhu” that he regained his health and per-
suaded his parents to let him convert. A similar turn of events occurred
when a pregnant woman in rural Fujian found herself in the midst of a
dangerous delivery. After swearing to become Christian if the Lord of
Heaven helped her in her time of need, she was given an agnus dei to wear
just as she gave birth. When both mother and child came through safely,
the woman and her husband “fulfilled their vow, and the whole household
became Christian.”90
The Jesuits also introduced their Chinese followers to the Catholic tra-
dition of relics. To be sure, they did not engage in importing human re-
mains from Europe and India to China to distribute to their Christians
(although they doubtless had some quantity of saintly flesh and bones in
their churches). Instead, they fostered devotions to certain saints—in par-
ticular the Society’s own, Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier—and em-
ployed derivative relics associated with them. For instance, the Jesuits
made use of slips of paper bearing an imprint of Loyola’s signature. These
items were either real autographs cut from the thousands of documents
signed by the Basque mystic during his tenure as the Society’s Superior
General or printed copies. According to one report from Jiangzhou in
Shanxi Province in the mid-1630s, this relic was so venerated by local
Christians that it “always travels from one Christian house to the next,
and from town to town.” Ignatius’s mark was used most often in cases of
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The Business of Conversion F


[To view this image, refer to  
the print version of this title.] 
 
 
 


demonic possession, as well as during deliveries when the lives of the
mother and child were at risk.91
Xavier’s relics also circulated in China. The fact that the Apostle of the
Orient had actually trod on Asian soil meant that physical traces of him
might still be found locally. In 1643 the missionaries at Shanghai had in
their possession a flask of water that had been filled in the puddles that ac-
cumulated at the feet of Xavier’s coffin in India. Sips from this relic, possi-
bly brought to China by Martino Martini, were reported to have healed
three moribund Christians that year alone.92 Other missionaries visited
the site of the saint’s first tomb on Shangchuan Island and collected hand-
kerchiefs full of dirt (they even “ripped up the nearby bushes”) for them-
selves and their flocks.93 The desire for such relics had not abated half a
century later, when Francisco Simões wrote of giving a Xaverian relic to a
woman in North Zhili. The Jesuit offered her a thread from a piece of
cloth that he had cut from the saint’s corpse. As soon as rumors began to
spread that the priest was distributing relics, he found scores of makeshift
reliquaries awaiting him in each village that he visited.94
The Vice-Province faced a considerable logistical challenge in attempt-
ing to provide devotional objects to its neophytes. In the best of circum-
stances, the missionaries could rely on regular shipments from Macau
filled with items from that Portuguese colony, from elsewhere in the
Estado da Índia, or even from Europe. It appears that the bulk of the ob-
jects that were sent to China by Jesuit procurators beyond the mission’s
borders came from the Portuguese territories in western India. But the
tenuous nature of the link between Goa and Macau, especially after the
fateful period from 1639 to 1641, which saw the end of the Japan trade and
the fall of Malacca, made it difficult for the Society to keep the Vice-Prov-
ince stocked with religious paraphernalia. The chaos of the dynastic tran-
sition in China merely added to the problem of finding adequate supplies
of imported Christian objects.
But the missionaries had the option to acquire materials locally, and at
times they commissioned artisans for this purpose. When the priests at
321
The Business of Conversion F
Painting of Madonna and Child, Chinese (Shaanxi Province), seventeenth century.
This scroll is one example of the devotional art produced in China by the Jesuits and
their Christian followers.


Xi’an exhausted their supply of nominas in 1634, they had a wooden tab-
let carved with the words “Jesus” and “Maria,” which they stamped on
special paper. Since these objects were more perishable than their metal
equivalents, some Christians took to wearing them “not around their
necks, but sewn into their caps and bonnets very prettily.”95 When the
mission’s finances were depleted, the Jesuits asked their Christians to pro-
duce their own objects for the priests to bless. While in Huai’an in 1640,
Francesco Sambiasi relied on the local Christians to make “a great quan-
tity” of nominas by hand. Although he conceded that the improvised
items were not as ornate or embellished as those made in Europe, all the
same they served “to make up for the lack.”96 And as the Pax Tartarica set-
tled over northern China in 1647, Inácio da Costa remarked on his flock’s
ingenuity in finding substitutes for imported rosaries. “No one lacks
something to pray with in this penury of beads,” he wrote. “Some buy
beads of the pagodes, restring them our way, and bring them to be blessed,
some string together wild seeds, some align balls of dough made of fra-
grant flour, some tie knots of straw, and some just pray with their fingers.”97
The symbolic vocabulary of the Jesuits’ Chinese Christians was not re-
stricted to the use of European devotional objects or their native equiva-
lents. One example of how they contributed to fashioning their own reli-
gious identity can be seen in the widespread use of Christian duilian. The
custom of making these sheets of red paper adorned with auspicious cou-
plets was an ancient Chinese practice with Daoist origins. Pasting them
around doorways was held to be an effective means for warding off evil
spirits.98 Native Christians adapted this custom for their own purposes by
decorating their homes with the names of Jesus and Mary. A report from
the early 1620s describes such public displays as acts of defiance against
the decrees of Shen Que, the impetus behind the Nanjing affair. “At the
very time when following the Law of God was prohibited with great pen-
alties,” wrote Francisco Furtado, “many folks had the holy name of Jesus
printed in large letters on red paper and posted above their doors as if to
say, ‘If you want me I am here, non recuso mori.’”99 In Shanghai two de-
cades later, the Jesuits reported that a Christian had made a similar de-
fense of the practice of displaying the shenghao, or holy names, above his
door. During an interrogation he told a mandarin that his duilian were
“arms against the devil.” Just as the city walls served to keep enemies at
bay, the Christian averred, “the holy name of God on these papers defends
our houses from the devil so he does not enter and disturb our souls.”100
It goes without saying that the devotional objects described here consti-
322
E building the church


tuted the most superficial level of the Chinese Christian’s religious iden-
tity. To be sure, the Jesuits preferred to envision their converts as true be-
lievers who relied on such items for establishing regular prayer habits or
moderating the rhythms of personal devotions rather than as simpletons
equipped with new talismans. The missionaries therefore had to find ways
of encouraging their neophytes to engage in forms of spiritual expression
that were not limited to the constant recitation of a few prayers. To this
end, they wrote devotional texts that replicated the form and content of
European spiritual literature for the laity. In addition to circulating Chris-
tian calendars listing all the feasts and fasts to be observed during the year,
the Jesuits distributed compendia of prayers, works of hagiography, and
elaborations on the various mysteries of the faith.
As one might expect, prayer manuals circulated widely in the mission
church. Among the plethora of such texts were included Giulio Aleni’s
discussion of how to attend mass, Misa jiyi; João Fróis’s explanation of the
Passion and its accompanying litanies, Tongku jingji; and the collaborative
volume of prayers called Tianzhu shengjiao nianjing zongdu. Whereas
Aleni’s text taught its readers how to comport themselves during rituals,
Fróis’s treatise presented its readers with material for individual devotions.
According to the 1628 Annual Letter, it related episodes from the lives of
Christ and the Virgin and contained the Litanies of the Saints and of the
Virgin with the intention of introducing Christians “to the pious practice
of praying in their homes at night.” Another such book presented medita-
tions by Gaspar Ferreira that included examples drawn from the lives of
the saints, special prayers for various occasions, and a summary of what
“the Church teaches about the saints and other mysteries.” According to
this source, these texts were “greatly celebrated by the Christians,” to the
point that they would bring them along when they came to mass or trav-
eled.101 No book, however, circulated more widely among the adherents of
Tianzhu jiao than Nianjing zongdu or Rike (Daily Exercises). The first edi-
tion of this work was printed at Hangzhou in 1628. In addition to prayers,
it contained a number of smaller devotional texts by different Jesuit au-
thors. According to António de Gouvea, there was “no other book that
the Christians carried in their hands so frequently.”102
“Unlike the Dark Temples”
The creation of Christian sanctuaries was the final transaction in the mis-
sionaries’ “business of conversion.” Only after they had claimed success in
323
The Business of Conversion F


sparking conversions and equipping their neophytes with Christian sym-
bols would they attempt to create physical focal points for their Christian
communities. To be sure, the Jesuits began this task as soon as they of-
fered devotional images to the newly baptized, by encouraging their neo-
phytes to set up oratories in their homes. But the presence of household
sanctuaries did not preclude the need for larger worship spaces, especially
in areas with large numbers of converts. The first centers of Christian ac-
tivity were the Jesuits’ urban residences. Each of these had a sanctuary
complete with altar, images, incense, and hortatory inscriptions, includ-
ing the Ten Commandments and lists of the Works of Mercy. These
buildings were either purchased by the Vice-Province or donated to the
mission by wealthy Christians (or by emperors, as in the case of the Pe-
king residences).
Beyond their urban residences, the Jesuits worked together with their
flock to improvise ritual spaces. The general poverty of rural neophytes
made this a difficult task. Many village sanctuaries were simply “orato-
ries,” that is, rooms in Christian homes that were emptied of furniture
during group devotions. Some villages had “chapels,” or designated sanc-
tuaries that did not revert to other uses when religious activities ceased.
Such was the case with the chapel consecrated by Pedro Ribeiro in the
town of Chuansha near Shanghai in 1636. According to that year’s Annual
Letter, a widow had offered part of her house as a sanctuary and quarters
for visiting priests. Ribeiro responded by installing above the altar an im-
age of the Savior, “to whose holy name the widow dedicated her chapel.”
The missionary was very pleased with this gesture toward the widow’s
coreligionists, noting that the space was “very commodious for the Chris-
tians to gather, to pray, and to hear spiritual talks.”103
The Jesuits and their Christians occasionally benefited from acts of pi-
ous largesse, whether from Chinese or external sources, that allowed them
to acquire new sanctuaries. Within China, donations of real estate or
funds came from wealthy Christians. For instance, members of the Xu
clan, in particular Paulo Xu Guangqi’s granddaughter Candida, were re-
sponsible for the purchase of several village sanctuaries in the Shanghai-
Songjiang area. In other areas, Christian communities often coalesced
around chapels established in households of the elite. One report from
1643 describes how a lower-level literatus from a town near Changshu of-
fered “one of the best rooms in his house” for installing an altar and an
image. What made this case especially noteworthy was that the local
324
E building the church


Christians organized a procession as part of the chapel’s consecration cere-
mony, passing through the streets, with candles in hand, behind a carriage
bedecked with silk drapery that bore the devotional image.104
The Vice-Province also used funds from outside China to establish
sanctuaries in places that were not properly mission stations, where indi-
vidual Jesuits negotiated for the purchase of secular buildings or disused
religious structures, transforming them into churches with room to lodge
a visiting priest or catechist. Before 1639, when Portuguese trade with Ja-
pan was abruptly severed, the China mission received donations from the
traders at Macau partly for this purpose. But thanks to the Society’s sus-
tained publicity efforts, pious legacies from farther afield also made their
way to China. For instance, Jacques le Faure purchased a decrepit temple
near the Jiangxi Province town of Ji’an in the late 1650s with “some alms
that arrived from Europe.” According to the Jesuit, the temple’s keepers
were in such dire straits that they did not object to his plan for converting
it into a Tianzhu tang. (Note that the term tang was also used to denote
administrative or judicial buildings, not Buddhist or Daoist sanctuaries—
a further semantic step from any lingering associations between the Jesuits
and their non-Christian rivals.)105 Le Faure’s first step was to send away
“the bonzes who lived in it, along with all their golden pagodes.” He was
happy to report to his superiors that he completed this move “with no up-
roar from the heathens, who instead were pleased to have such heavenly
protection for their town.”106
So the Jesuits made use of existing structures in much the same way
that they christened Buddhist prayer beads as rosaries. By transforming
temples into churches, the missionaries appropriated loci associated with
the sacred in the popular mind. This practice should not be considered
yet another example of the singular capacity for tolerance and cultural ac-
commodation that has long been ascribed to the China Jesuits but rather
should be seen as a shrewd financial move necessitated by the limited
financial resources of the missionaries and their followers. To erect new
churches was a far more costly endeavor than to purchase decaying tem-
ples from cash-strapped religious communities. Moreover, it is unclear
precisely how many of the Jesuits’ church buildings were actually former
temples rather than secular buildings.
This is not to say that the conversion of temples into churches never
provoked popular resistance, or that the consecration of new churches al-
ways facilitated the Jesuits’ proselytizing efforts. Rather, these were conve-
325
The Business of Conversion F


nient ways for the mission church to make its physical (and spiritual)
presence felt. For instance, during his visits to the Wuyi Mountains in
Fujian Province in 1645, Simão da Cunha reported how a “famous tem-
ple” had been converted into a church. After the local Christians (perhaps
with the Jesuit’s help) purchased the building, a neophyte named Lucas
took the initiative to cast out its Buddhist icons, pausing only to smash
the head of each statue. Cunha blessed the sanctuary, much to the “joy of
all of the Christians, as also to the sadness of its former devotees, who
used to come every month on pilgrimage.”107 At some point during the
following decade, the Wuyi Christians acquired another temple that they
dedicated to the Virgin and reserved for the use of women.108
Although it may sound paradoxical, the creation of ritual spaces for the
worship of the Lord of Heaven did not necessarily mean that the Jesuits
and their Christians engaged in the public practice of their religion. It was
one thing to rededicate a temple in the remote Fujian wilderness to
Tianzhu but a vastly different task to attempt the same thing in Peking or
even a relative backwater like Shanghai. The public practice of Tianzhu
jiao would have been the clearest possible sign that Christianity had be-
come part of the Chinese religious landscape. It would have been explicit
confirmation that the missionaries’ traffic in “divine merchandise” was le-
gitimate in the eyes of the authorities and that their followers were viewed
as a group which practiced a nonthreatening minority religion. Short of
the conversion of the emperor himself, the establishment of recognizable
and tolerated Christian communities centered on identifiable sanctuaries
was the sum of the Jesuits’ aspirations for their mission.
It was only in the middle decades of the seventeenth century, in the
midst of the chaos of the dynastic transition, that the Jesuits and their fol-
lowers felt confident enough to move the practice of their religion into the
public eye. In the last decades of Ming rule, as the mission laid its founda-
tions from north to south, it had done so under a veil. In spite of the re-
nown of figures such as Matteo Ricci, the practice of Tianzhu jiao in Pe-
king took place behind closed doors. As Visitor André Palmeiro learned
during his stay there in 1629, the city’s male Christians attended masses
and heard sermons on Sundays and holy days in a sanctuary which was
“very pretty and gilded, but not open to the public.”109 It could not have
been too private, though, since the Peking church was described alongside
brief explanations of Christian doctrine in indigenous guides to the scenic
sites of the capital printed in the 1630s.110
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E building the church


By the time the dust had settled at the new Qing court in 1644, the Je-
suits and their followers were part of the pattern of Chinese life, and their
churches were the largest signs of the Christian thread in the fabric of
Chinese religion. At Peking, the repeated gestures of friendship made by
the Shunzhi emperor toward Johann Adam Schall emboldened the mis-
sionaries to make changes in the outward display of their faith. One of the
clearest manifestations of this shift could be seen in the design of the new
residence, called the Eastern Church, which Shunzhi granted to Gabriel
de Magalhães and Lodovico Buglio in 1655. On the building’s façade,
above the courtyard of the new church, the Jesuits commissioned a set of
sculptures and a large cross to complement the gold-lettered panel reading
“Gift of the Emperor” that hung over the main door. All of these Chris-
tian symbols were clearly visible to passersby above the residence’s walls,
proclaiming the presence of the missionaries and their religion in no un-
certain terms.111
Elsewhere in China the missionaries also took advantage of the
changed political climate to promote the crystallization of a Chinese
Christian identity. Taking their cue from the events at Peking, the Jesuits
in the provinces embellished their urban churches with palpable signs of
the presence of Tianzhu jiao, making statements in stone and wood.
Shedding the inhibitions of the past, they even introduced architectural
forms of European inspiration into the design of the churches that they
opened in the late 1650s and early 1660s.112 Work on two new sanctuar-
ies in European style commenced at Hangzhou and Yangzhou in the
Jiangnan region as the 1650s drew to a close. And when Jacques le Faure
inaugurated a new residence in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province, in January
1658, he was keen to add Western features to its sanctuary. Taking advan-
tage of the good relations that he maintained with governor Tong Guoqi
( juren 1648, d. 1684) and other mandarins, and putting the sum of one
hundred taels given him by the governor to good use, he commissioned a
cruciform church. While the building was of modest size (“five fathoms at
its length, and three and a half at its crossing”), its two rows of windows
near the roofline let daylight stream inside, filling the space. According to
le Faure, this characteristic made his church “noticeably unlike the dark
temples of the Chinese.”113 What the local Christians did inside their
sanctuaries also differed from what took place in Buddhist and Daoist
sanctuaries, as we shall see in the next chapter.
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The Business of Conversion F


9
A Good Method and Order
In early 1655 Manuel Jorge raised a cry of alarm over the state
of the Vice-Province of China. Seventeen priests and three coadjutors, he
lamented, were all that was left to staff the mission church. “Such a small
number,” exclaimed Jorge, “to garrison so many fortresses!” Every mem-
ber of this paltry band was entrusted with a Chinese province, “each as big
as a kingdom.” To make matters worse, the “troubles of old age and gray
hair” had greatly limited the missionaries’ capacities. Some Jesuits, such as
Manuel Dias the younger and Álvaro Semedo, were in their seventies,
while others like Simão da Cunha, Johann Adam Schall, and António de
Gouvea were in their sixties. Several were over fifty, and only two men—
Feliciano Pacheco and Jorge himself—were in their thirties. Citing the
mission’s chronic shortage of manpower and the burgeoning number of
neophytes, Jorge wondered what the future might hold for the Society’s
China enterprise. Logic dictated that if this situation continued, those
twenty men would pass away leaving tens of thousands of Christians
“without masters to teach them, without pastors to govern them, without
examples to animate them.”1
Jorge hoped to attract a wave of new recruits to the mission. His re-
marks were meant to engender the pity and resolve of his intended audi-
ence—his confreres in Europe, many of whom, he claimed, were “occu-
pied with only one lesson, only one sermon each month or, at times, only
one confession outside their residences each week.” But Jorge’s plaint on
the number of missionaries and his lament for the Vice-Province’s future


obscured one of the China Jesuits’ primary accomplishments, the inter-
nal organization of the mission church. His rhetoric was illogical. Jorge
voiced fears for the mission’s future, not its present, leaving the question
of how seventeen priests and three coadjutors could manage a body of be-
lievers that counted tens of thousands of souls. How was it possible that
the missionaries did not fold under the crushing weight of these pastoral
burdens? To be sure, it was only in the late 1690s (and then only in the
Shanghai area, the region that far outstripped all others in numbers of
Christians) that the Jesuits began to admit that they no longer knew the
true size of their mission church. But they had devised effective tech-
niques for looking after their flocks with the minimum of pastors years
before that.
Growth posed challenges of two distinct orders. The first was organiza-
tional, demanding more calculation than zeal. In contrast to the images of
heroism that captured the fancy of early modern hagiographers and even
some modern scholars, the work of missionaries after the initial phase of
conversion was essentially identical to that of parish priests. As one Je-
suit commentator explained in reference to missions outside European
colonial rule—and therefore beyond the control of the secular church,
its bishops, secular clergy, and inquisitors—“since there are not enough
priests in those parts to serve as the pastors and vicars of those Christians
who newly convert and receive baptism, the Society is entrusted with
their cultivation.”2 Put differently, the lack of diocesan structures that
might have given fuller institutional articulation to the practice of Cathol-
icism in China made each mission station a de facto cathedral and every
subordinate Christian community a de facto parish.
The China Jesuits’ vocations, however, were clearly not the same as
those of parish priests (or other members of the secular clergy) in Europe
or its overseas empires. The mission church was therefore not drawn along
diocesan lines. Rather, it was structured according to the Society’s tried
and tested methods of shaping lay piety and organizing students in its col-
leges. Its building blocks were groups of laymen, called sodalities, confra-
ternities, or brotherhoods, and hui, meaning “association” or “society,” in
Chinese. Seeking to dispel ambiguities, one missionary felt compelled to
explain: “By confraternities we do not mean groups of the kind com-
monly formed in Europe. They are like classes that we divide the Chris-
tians into so we can attend to them by turns.”3 The groups’ resemblance
to parishes was limited to their being localized bodies of believers who
329
A Good Method and Order F


converged on a specific sanctuary for receiving the sacraments and con-
ducting devotions. Beyond this aspect, the organizational units of the
mission church had none of the legal or political qualities of their coun-
terparts outside the Vice-Province.4
Even in the realm of lay piety, the Jesuits’ organizational sodalities were
only distant reflections of parishes. To start with, the missionaries them-
selves were far from being the overseas equivalents of European benefice
holders. They did not envision their ministry in China in the same way
that even a reform-minded parish priest in Catholic Europe conceived of
his cure of souls. The spiritual life of the Jesuits’ “parishes” centered on
certain pious activities that often made them more dynamic, at least in
terms of their devotional practice, than a significant fraction of their Eu-
ropean coevals. The Chinese units, typically called Shengmu hui, Brother-
hoods of the Holy Mother, mandated weekly prayer routines for mem-
bers, encouraged community solidarity, and made the reception of the
sacraments obligatory. Such demands made them watered-down versions
of the devotional confraternities to be discussed in the next chapter, yet
while setting the bar for lay piety among Chinese Christians higher than it
was for most European Catholics. That this should be the case among the
Society’s spiritual charges is not surprising. After all, the Jesuits were rep-
resentatives of a reforming impulse among the Catholic clergy which
sought to transform the nature of lay piety from passive attendance at rit-
uals to active desire for the sacraments. Whereas in Europe the Jesuits re-
lied on their example of fervor to inspire the laity, offering spiritual direc-
tion only to those who attended their schools or became members of their
lay brotherhoods, in China they made such ideals of religious practice the
expected norm for their flock.
Even if organizational brotherhoods enabled the Jesuits to devolve
much of the responsibility for communal devotions onto the Chinese
Christians, the missionaries still needed to supervise the religious activities
of the mission church. As the number of adherents of Tianzhu jiao in-
creased and the number of priests stagnated, the challenge of oversight in-
creasingly fell to the missionaries’ auxiliaries. These individuals, often re-
ferred to as catechists, were drawn from the ranks of the neophytes who
had shown zeal and willingness to serve as doctrine teachers, local leaders,
and intermediaries between the priests and their far-flung communities.5
The Jesuits gave them the power to baptize, to exhort their fellow Chris-
tians, and to teach catechism to the children who had been born into the
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faith. In short, they were responsible for supervising, indoctrinating, and
expanding the mission church, taking on the tasks the Jesuits could no
longer perform if they wanted to make it possible for all of their followers
to say confession and receive the Eucharist at least once each year. To en-
sure that catechists maintained their zeal, the missionaries elaborated a
system of mutual oversight based on the confraternity model. By the end
of the seventeenth century they were, as one missionary put it, “like the
nerves or the arms” used by the priests for cultivating their Chinese
church.6
“The Holy Use of Confraternities”
When Matteo Ricci was forced from Zhaoqing in 1589, he exhorted his
converts to persevere “in the midst of a pagan nation” and informed them
of the trials of the Primitive Church. While promising to return as soon as
he could, he urged them not to forget what it had taken them “seven
whole years to learn” and left a set of instructions to govern their commu-
nal spiritual life in his absence. Ricci told them to gather at the home of
one of their number on appointed days to “speak of divine matters and
commend themselves to God.” To assist them in planning their activities,
he supplied them with a calendar of Catholic feasts organized according
to the lunar months.7 It is unclear what happened to this group of Chris-
tians in the decades that followed, since the Jesuits, it appears, did not re-
turn to Zhaoqing for decades. Nevertheless, the creation of this conventi-
cle was their first attempt to equip their followers with the institutional
means for practicing Catholicism in their absence.
As their enterprise got more fully under way, the Jesuits experimented
with various techniques for managing their communities of converts. One
of the first substantial groups of neophytes was centered on the Nanchang
mission station in Jiangxi Province. By 1605 João Soeiro and Manuel Dias
the elder claimed to have over two hundred souls in their care, far too
many to gather at the small chapel at once. The missionaries therefore di-
vided their Christians into three groups. Each of these was assigned a dif-
ferent day each month to gather at the sanctuary for prayers and a sermon
or a doctrine lesson from a priest. All of the Christians were encouraged to
assist at mass on Sundays and feast days, despite the suspicions that such
gatherings might arouse.8
In dividing their flock, the Jesuits were relying on organizational tech-
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niques drawn from their experience in their order’s colleges. Virtually all
of the China missionaries had years of experience as schoolmasters in the
Society’s well-subscribed grammar and rhetoric classes. They knew how to
deal with large groups and were skilled at dividing students for mutual en-
couragement and “pious competition.” The Jesuits’ methods in the mis-
sion field recalled their use of decuries (groups of ten students led by an
appointed decurion) in the classroom, as discussed in Chapter 6. They
were clearly aware of the parallels between their indispensable organiza-
tional activities in China and their order’s customary pedagogical prac-
tices, and they took advantage of those similarities.
It is nevertheless worth noting that forms of communal organization
had a rich pedigree in Chinese society. The Jesuits thought they could rely
on their order’s standard educational methods and they were correct, be-
cause late Ming society was fertile ground for their initiatives. In rural as
in urban settings, there was a profusion of hui serving all manner of pur-
poses, religious and secular. Nicolas Standaert asserts that the Jesuits did
little more than encourage the impulse among their followers to form as-
sociations.9 Such a claim is especially apt with regard to the organizational
confraternities, since the primary value of these groups was the cohesion
they offered to the mission church. Thus the fact that Chinese men and
women from all levels of society were familiar with forms of communal
religious activity mitigated the Jesuits’ organizational challenge.
The division of Christian communities into smaller units did more
than facilitate pastoral care; it provided a means of defense from persecu-
tion. Since the majority of Christians came from plebeian ranks, there was
a distinct possibility that their gatherings would attract unwanted at-
tention from the authorities. Part of the common litany of complaints
against secret religious sects in late imperial China invoked fears of sedi-
tion and popular uprisings incited by unorthodox teachings. To manda-
rins who had only a superficial knowledge of Tianzhu jiao, Christianity
seemed similar to outlawed sects such as the White Lotus, something
the Nanchang Jesuits found out to their peril in 1607. This sect was a
perennial target of (unsuccessful) crackdowns, because its leaders were
suspected of fomenting peasant rebellions. The Jesuits appear to have
bought the official line on the White Lotus movement, which they as-
serted was “like that of the Anabaptists in Europe,” in that it obliged its
devotees to engage in practices reminiscent of “those horrendous stories
from Münster in Germany.”10 Christianity had to avoid being lumped in
with heterodox sects at all costs, as Matteo Ricci and his confreres knew
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only too well. One tactic was to publicize Tianzhu jiao by circulating
books about its religious message. Another was to keep a low profile, dis-
guising Christian assemblies as much as possible by dividing larger ones
into smaller units—although this was precisely the same tactic used by the
White Lotus sectarians and other outlawed groups.
A further impetus for the development of a fragmented system of
church organization came from the presence of female Christians. The ex-
istence of social taboos against interactions between unrelated men and
women did not dissuade the missionaries from attempting to provide pas-
toral care to all of their converts. As the number of Christian women in-
creased, the Jesuits had to devise a way for dealing with them in a socially
acceptable manner. Whereas in the countryside there was greater inter-
mingling of the sexes, and the missionaries therefore were able to bring
men and women together for rituals, things were different in the cities
where the Society maintained residences. Since urban mission stations
doubled as living quarters, discretion demanded that their sanctuaries be
restricted to men only. Experience had cautioned the Jesuits against trans-
gressing gender taboos, and in 1621 the Vice-Province’s foundational stat-
utes mandated the separation of male and female neophytes. Missionaries
were ordered to “seek to create a few oratories in the homes of some
Christians where women can be baptized, mass can be said, and talks can
be given to them.”11 So important was gender separation for preserving
the Jesuits’ good name that Visitor André Palmeiro reiterated this order
verbatim just eight years later.12
In addition, the missionaries took care in shaping the way that fe-
male neophytes would practice their religion, making reference to familiar
European models of group piety. In the decades since their order was
founded in 1540, the Jesuits had created scores of devotional groups for lay
Catholics. During their formative years, all the priests who worked in
China had belonged to their order’s flagship archconfraternity, a group
primarily for students that was dedicated to Our Lady of the Annuncia-
tion and had branches in all of the Society’s colleges. The Annunciadas, as
they were called in the Portuguese world, will be discussed in detail in the
next chapter, but it is important to note now that, to a man, the mission-
aries were fully experienced in the coordination of group piety. In the
Ming empire they relied on this experience for structuring the devotional
life of their neophytes, institutionalizing prayer routines and reception of
the sacraments by writing them into each group’s statutes.
Starting in the 1620s, but increasing in pace in the 1630s, the Jesuits or-
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A Good Method and Order F


ganized their female followers into confraternities dedicated to the Blessed
Virgin, Shengmu hui. The sanctuaries where women met for communal
devotions were labeled Shengmu tang, or Chapels of the Holy Mother, in
contrast to the residence churches used by men, which typically invoked
the Savior. In 1634, for example, five women’s groups that met in different
neighborhoods could be found in Hangzhou. According to João Fróis, the
women of each quarter would gather in oratories at private homes on ap-
pointed days in order “to be cultivated, and so that those wishing to be
baptized can become Christians.” The same year, another women’s group
was founded at a town in Shaanxi Province. The members of this confra-
ternity met “once or more times” each month for prayers and for discuss-
ing matters of the faith. “Those who understand better and know more,”
wrote Fróis, “were entrusted with instructing and indoctrinating those
who are less proficient.”13 Three years later, Gaspar Ferreira took a similar
approach at Jianchang in Jiangxi Province. The town’s Christians, he
claimed, were “very given to confraternities”; the women had their own
Shengmu hui. Four times during the course of the year they would gather
in a private home “to hear mass, confess, and take communion and
to spend the day hearing good talks and performing their devotions.”
Much to Ferreira’s consolation, these activities were not limited to urban
women. In rural villages, the “holy use of confraternities” had been suc-
cessfully introduced as well.14
The primary aim of founding women’s confraternities was to provide a
focal point for devotions, a space where individuals benefited more from
their peers than from their pastors. This is not to say that the priests who
assisted in the pious exercises of each group were not important, but
rather that the Christians themselves were primarily responsible for their
communal spiritual life. So the confraternity mode of organization was an
ideal model for coordinating various groups of Christians whom the Jesu-
its could not continuously cultivate. It worked particularly well among
the dispersed pockets of converts claimed by the missionaries in rural ar-
eas. The Jesuits dedicated those groups to the Virgin as well, calling them
Shengmu hui.
As the number of rural converts grew in the late 1620s and early 1630s,
so did the number of new confraternities. For instance, Alfonso Vagnone
oversaw the creation of several such groups around Jiangzhou in Shanxi
Province. The 1630 Annual Letter reports that in four or five different vil-
lages, he designated chapels where Christians would “gather to pray their
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devotions and read spiritual books, exhorting one another how to keep
the Commandments.” These sanctuaries had space for lodging the mis-
sionaries, although the Jesuits’ visits typically lasted for only a few days
each year. To make up for the lack of resident priests, Vagnone ap-
pointed “some of the more fervent and devout” as community leaders, or
huizhang. These individuals were entrusted with “inciting the others to
exercises of piety and devotion.”15 A similar organizational system was em-
ployed among the Christians living in the countryside around Peking. By
1637 Niccolò Longobardo reported that there were fourteen oratories in
different towns and villages where neophytes gathered to hold their con-
fraternity meetings. A priest would visit these groups by turn to offer
them the sacraments of the Eucharist and penance. According to the Jesu-
its, some outsiders were so impressed with the Christians’ group devotions
that they, too, asked for baptism.16
While all of the China Jesuits undertook the task of establishing
women’s groups or rural confraternities regardless of geographical region,
the priests at Shanghai faced the greatest logistical challenges. Their flock
was, bar none, the largest and would remain so until long after the end of
the period discussed here. In the 1630s Pedro Ribeiro became the first mis-
sionary to experience the burden of having to “walk in circles almost all
year long” in order to attend to the Christians in his care.17 Faced with
even greater pastoral burdens, Ribeiro’s successor Francesco Brancati ra-
tionalized his approach to the Shanghai church. After all, he was the only
priest in an area with thousands of Christians, all of whom needed to have
their confessions heard and take communion every year. Therefore, by
1643 Brancati had organized the Christians residing in the city’s outlying
villages into thirty men’s groups dedicated to the Virgin.18 As the number
of adherents of Tianzhu jiao grew, so did the number of confraternities. In
1647, only four years later, Brancati reported that he managed forty con-
fraternities meant to ensure that all Christians would be able to confess “at
least once or twice during the year.” (He ministered to women during an-
nual visits to their villages.) Each of these groups had its own leader, who
coordinated prayers and served as the intermediary with the Jesuit. Each
year during Advent and Lent, Brancati invited the sodalities by turn to the
Shanghai church to receive the sacraments. “With this plan,” read the
Annual Letter in 1647, “the work proceeds more smoothly and the mis-
sionary’s conscience is calm, since he reports that all of his parishioners
confess.”19
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A Good Method and Order F


Brancati was convinced that he had discovered the ideal method for
structuring the spiritual life of his numerous charges. In 1648 he sent an-
other description of the Shanghai area men’s confraternities to the Annual
Letter’s compiler. Brancati explained how he had started another five
Shengmu hui, bringing the total number to forty-five. Twelve of these
bodies had their own chapels, or dedicated structures, while the rest
met in oratories, that is, special rooms in Christian homes. On the first
Sunday of the month, every group would gather at its sanctuary to pray,
hear readings from spiritual books, or “perform other devout works” un-
til midday. On All Saints’ Day (November 1), Brancati would announce
the schedule according to which the different confraternities would visit
Shanghai’s Church of the Savior during the following Advent and Lent.
On each group’s appointed day, its members would awake at midnight to
begin their trek to the sanctuary. Upon arriving, they would set many can-
dles upon a bier placed in the middle of the church. Brancati would say
mass, after which he would lead the group in saying prayers for the Chris-
tian villagers who had died that year. Then the priest would retire to the
church’s sacristy, leaving the congregation kneeling and praying the Lit-
anies of the Virgin. Brancati would later return to give a sermon and after
that would hear confessions. As a means of keeping attendance, all wrote
down their names, and the huizhang compiled a list of those absent, as-
suming the responsibility for telling those who had not come, those who
were sick, and those who were away on business to report for confession
on another day.20
However effective Brancati’s system was, it could not replace the type of
pastoral care that came from continual contact with a priest. But in light
of the Vice-Province’s chronic lack of manpower, it was the best possible
solution. Reports from the 1640s reveal that Brancati was aware of this
predicament, suggesting that even the mutual supervision of village Chris-
tians through their confraternities was not enough to keep all from “going
cold.” In one case he told how a venomous snake had bitten a Christian
woman who had “because of her laziness one day stopped going to Our
Lady’s Confraternity that was held in her village.”21 In another instance he
described a man who had gradually lost his faith. “Finding himself in the
midst of profits and merchandise,” wrote Brancati, “little by little he saw
the capital of Christian devotion and the profit of his many merits suffer,
making him cold and unconcerned for his soul.”22 So lax did this Chris-
tian become that he tried to hang himself three times. Yet each time he
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began to tighten the noose, he “remembered Our Lady and that he was a
member of her brotherhood,” and felt the knot loosen. During a fourth
attempt, when he was about to drown himself in a river, he had an even
more vivid vision of his divine protectress. His “diabolical intention” was
so pernicious, she informed him, “that by fleeing from the passing labors
of life in this way he was only setting himself up for an eternity of suffer-
ing.” Upon hearing this warning, we are told, the Christian came to
his senses, returning to his Shengmu hui to participate with “diligence and
fervor.”23
The organizational strategies developed during the final years of Ming
rule proved their worth during the cataclysm of the dynastic transition.
Not only did the Shengmu hui offer a degree of mutual psychological sup-
port during this time of great anxiety, but also they ensured a modicum of
security for the Jesuits’ Christians. The fact that new converts were easily
integrated into existing groups also meant that the missionaries could take
advantage of the climate of crisis for publicizing their religious message
instead of having to focus on teaching the practice of Catholicism to new
converts. For instance, when rebel armies overran the city of Xi’an in the
early 1640s and prevented large gatherings, the Jesuits were forced to reor-
ganize the community. They divided the women’s confraternity into four
smaller groups according to neighborhoods and appointed days for each
group to visit the local Shengmu tang. “In this way there was no one who
was not cultivated in the things of God,” reported Inácio da Costa, “and
the danger that could have arisen if they all gathered at once was avoided.”
Nevertheless, he claimed, there was no controlling the fervor of some
women who insisted on coming to all four meetings “and were not even
satisfied with that.”24
By the time Qing rule was established across most of China in the
1650s, the confraternity model of organization had become the dominant
form of communal piety. This meant that, in effect, the Vice-Province’s
manpower needs left an indelible mark on the practice of Catholicism in
China. In coastal Jiangnan, where the numerical strength of Tianzhu jiao
was greatest, the vast majority of Christians practiced their religion in
Confraternities of the Holy Mother. During the two and a half decades
that Francesco Brancati spent at Shanghai, he made sure that the hui was
the locus of almost all ordinary communal piety. Between 1643 and 1658
he increased the number of confraternities from 30 to 120.25 So expansive
had his hui network become that when he sent a list of the churches, cha-
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A Good Method and Order F


pels, and oratories that he administered to Visitor Francisco Furtado in
1653, he referred to it as “this diocese of mine.” Beyond the two main
churches, the catechumen house, and mortuary chapel within the city
walls, Brancati circulated among at least thirty-three sanctuaries each year.
At the time, his flock was divided into seventy confraternities, and the aim
of all was to “conserve and augment” the mission church. “Your Rever-
ence can see from this report,” pleaded the overburdened Sicilian, “the
great necessity I have for companions who can help me cultivate and carry
forward this Christian community.”26
The priests’ increased reliance on confraternity structures at mid-cen-
tury inevitably provoked negative responses from the more zealous mem-
bers of the mission church, men and women who were not satisfied with
the routines of their “parishes” and preferred more frequent access to the
sacraments and more interaction with their pastors. While devotional
brotherhoods with especially rigorous practices, designated to provide
outlets for that type of fervency, could be established in areas with greater
concentrations of Christians, not every village could muster enough peo-
ple to make such groups practicable. A complicated case was cited from
the Hangzhou region by Feliciano Pacheco, who reported that the Shengmu
hui, “both those inside and outside the city walls,” were true examples of
“fervor and edification,” making up for the fact that most of the rural
Christians lived too far from the church to attend mass in the city. But he
added that some of his flock were “not content with the brotherhoods.”
These men (one assumes) came from “two or more leagues distant,” wak-
ing at midnight to begin their trek to Hangzhou.27 Impassioned Chris-
tians even came part of the way from their villages—“half a league”—on
their knees, performing this self-mortification not only on major holy
days but also on those of secondary importance.28
In spite of the dissatisfaction of a handful of Christians, the Jesuits had
little reason to experiment with different ways of administering the mis-
sion church in the second half of the seventeenth century. The missionar-
ies’ exile to Canton in the late 1660s confirmed the worth of the system
that had been implemented thus far. The Shengmu hui had met the task of
maintaining the dispersed groups as effectively during the years that the
Jesuits spent in their confinement as they had under normal circum-
stances, when the missionaries were around the proverbial corner from
their flocks. In fact, the missionaries’ exile created the conditions for ex-
panding the modes of group piety that had previously been limited to
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women and rural men. In the absence of their pastors, urban male Chris-
tians organized themselves in the manner of their rural counterparts, co-
ordinating their devotions just like the Shengmu hui. This system, with its
strong emphasis on lay coordination and limited pastoral oversight, would
continue long after the end of the Canton exile. The numbers of mission-
aries did not increase and even decreased in the 1670s and 1680s, and the
Jesuits, intent at all costs on preserving the church they had created, ac-
cordingly stuck to tried-and-true methods, relegating innovation to the
back burner.
Brothers and Sisters of the Holy Mother
The upshot of the Jesuits’ determination to spread the use of organiza-
tional groups throughout the mission church was that certain forms of pi-
ety and specific devotions took precedence over others. But which ones?
Their insistence on communal piety meant that the practice of Catholi-
cism in China was largely restricted to the Society’s interpretation of
proper lay religious activities. Just as the Jesuits themselves were virtu-
ally the sole representatives of the Catholic clergy in the country until
late in the seventeenth century, the devotions of Chinese Christians in
their organizational confraternities were synonymous with the practice of
Tianzhu jiao. But what was it like to belong to one of these brotherhoods?
What were the members’ obligations? And what were their rewards, spiri-
tual and temporal?
A Chinese manuscript that lays down the statutes for setting up a
Shengmu hui, or Marian Confraternity, provides answers to these ques-
tions. This text is found at the Roman Archive of the Society of Jesus
along with two other sets of confraternity statutes in Chinese (to be exam-
ined later on). Although the document is anonymous and contains no in-
ternal references to the Vice-Province, it was most likely composed either
by a Jesuit or by one of the Society’s lay auxiliaries.29
The rules commence with a preamble about the reasons for starting
such a group and the benefits of membership. There follow eleven points
regarding the group’s practices and structure. The organizational character
of the statutes is revealed in the initial declaration: this type of group was
instituted for Christians who “live in the remote countryside and may be
unable to come to the church.” Missionaries created Shengmu hui “in vari-
ous places” throughout their districts to facilitate prayer gatherings in a
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A Good Method and Order F


given area on Sundays and feast days. Members were informed that “all of
the brotherhoods” were called Brotherhoods of the Holy Mother because
Mary was “the perfect virgin, whom the Lord of Heaven chose to conceive
the Holy Son.” The invocation of the Virgin made these Chinese groups
similar, as far as their devotional aspects were concerned, to the Soci-
ety’s lay brotherhoods in Europe (for instance, the previously mentioned
brotherhoods of Our Lady of the Annunciation). While the Jesuits could
not claim exclusivity in this universal Catholic devotion, most of their
brotherhoods had an explicitly Marian character, in much the same way
that those founded by the Dominicans often invoked the rosary.30
The preamble suggests that the body of the statutes was the only struc-
ture holding Chinese Christian communities together. The rules sought
to ensure group cohesion by reminding members that they were con-
stantly in danger of making a wrong turn onto the road to perdition.
Mary “most merciful” was invoked as the “mother of us all,” the ideal
guide to the sacred teaching who led the way to Heaven. True devotion to
her was needed for Christians to avoid “the lure of Satan,” so that they
might gain eternal happiness rather than earn the unending pains of hell.
Spiritual commitment to the Virgin involved observance of the Ten Com-
mandments and regular participation in confraternity activities.
These exhortations to assiduity and piety were, in effect, the only stric-
tures that the Jesuits were able to place on their Christians. (Even after
Tianzhu jiao became a faith that was passed from one generation to an-
other through kinship networks, the missionaries repeatedly lamented
that family ties were scarcely more effective than exhortations for binding
Chinese Christians to their religion.) But perhaps this was the Jesuits’ way
of ensuring that only the truly committed would remain loyal. The stat-
utes do not stipulate mechanisms for enforcing attendance; they only per-
mit repeated exhortations to those who do not “abide by the regulations,
or skip meetings without an excuse.” Total recalcitrants were to be “left
alone.”31
The principal activity of these Marian brotherhoods was communal
prayer. The first point of the statutes clearly outlines the order of the reci-
tations to take place at each meeting. Members were to kneel, make the
sign of the cross, and say an introductory prayer (found in Nianjing
zongdu, the standard prayer manual). They then recited nine Ave Marias
and nine Paternosters. This set of prayers was repeated nine times, each
time with a different invocation in the following order: the Holy Trinity;
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the Passion of Christ and the Eucharist; Mary, mother of mercy; Saint Jo-
seph, patron saint of China; angels and guardian angels; saints and per-
sonal patron saints; and the souls in Purgatory. The final two repeats in-
voked the spiritual benefit of the mission church: the eighth invocation
was for the Lord’s blessing to descend upon “the family of each member
and the community,” while the ninth was for Tianzhu to “enlighten the
hearts and minds of all people to accept the Holy Teaching.” The ritual
was sealed with the sign of the cross, and then a selected member of the
group read “a few passages from a sacred book.”32
Other Jesuit sources, such as Philippe Couplet’s biography of Candida
Xu, also outline sequences of prayers. Couplet’s description of commu-
nal devotions in the Shanghai-Songjiang area in the 1670s contains some
interesting details. Evidently, the confraternity members chanted respon-
sorial prayers under the guidance of their president, the huizhang. The or-
ganizational confraternity statutes do not specify this particular aspect of
lay devotion, but it appears to have been the standard way of reciting
prayers—and remained so until the early twentieth century. According to
Couplet, the first set of devotions began with the sign of the cross. The as-
sembled Christians would then “slowly sing” the Litanies of the Saints.
After these initial prayers, the huizhang intoned a series of orations, first
for “the Emperor, for the magistrates, for peace in the empire, and for the
fruits of the earth,” and then for “the Emperor of the Holy Law (as the
pope is called in China), for the priests, and for the whole church.” Fur-
ther prayers were said for causes similar to those found in the Shengmu hui
statutes, namely, for “the propagation of the faith, for the extirpation of
heresies, for the preachers of the Gospel,” and for the Chinese faithful,
both living and deceased.33
The Shengmu hui statutes, being intended to strengthen Christian soli-
darity, fostered ideas of community that differed from the standard Chi-
nese understanding of hui membership. For instance, while it was com-
mon practice for social gatherings to include a meal or banquet, the
statutes expressly forbade eating at meeting times. “Keep in mind,” reads
the second rule, “that enjoyment of the flesh will spoil the well-being of
the spirit.”34 From the missionaries’ perspective, this injunction served
two purposes. First, it kept the prayer meetings from becoming occasions
of drunkenness or gluttony. It also preempted the inevitable tensions that
would arise if people felt forced to compete with one another in offering
food at meetings. It is likely, however, that the first reason alone provided
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A Good Method and Order F


[To view this image, refer to  
the print version of this title.] 
 
 
 


sufficient justification for the missionaries to bar banqueting. After all,
one of the greatest transformations of popular piety in Catholic Europe in
the early modern period was the shift from occupational-based confrater-
nities to devotional groups as the principal loci of collective lay piety. As a
result, there was a dramatic decrease in the amount of feasting that was
typically associated with confraternity activities, something for which the
reforming Catholic clergy duly congratulated itself.35
The statutes made provisions for a huizhang, who was to be elected by
the group’s members, along with two deputies, “so that things may be
handled properly and efficiently.” Apart from the community’s general ap-
probation, there appear to have been no prerequisites for this office. It is
tempting to assume that the same marks of prestige that distinguished in-
dividuals in late Ming and early Qing villages helped to narrow down the
pool of candidates for the post of huizhang. For instance, the Jesuits
recorded that the Confraternity of the Holy Mother in the village of
Nanfeng in Jiangxi Province elected a “literatus of much knowledge and
virtue” as president in August 1692.36 Not enough biographical data about
the membership of the mission church have been uncovered as yet to per-
mit definite conclusions. There can be no doubt, however, that the title of
huizhang conferred a degree of respect among Chinese Christians that
made it a desirable position for pious men.
Few special functions for the huizhang are outlined in the Shengmu hui
statutes. It can be inferred that the president was responsible for recording
the name of each family that belonged to the group (although, for rea-
sons of safety, not the names of “everyone in the family”). Likewise, the
huizhang was to serve as the group’s moral censor, expelling those mem-
bers who were “known to have sinned” until they reconciled themselves.
Keeping Christians apprised of the calendar of major feast days so that
they could meet for prayers was among the huizhang’s primary duties. An-
other responsibility was acting as an intermediary between the commu-
nity and the closest missionary. It was, moreover, the president’s duty to
identify children who had gleaned some bits of doctrine so that the priest
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A Good Method and Order F
Woodcut print of the Annunciation in Method for Reciting the Rosary (Song nianzhu
guicheng), appended to João da Rocha, Instruction for the Young on the Holy Religion
of the Lord of Heaven (Tianzhu shengjiao qimeng), 1619.


might bestow devotional objects on them during his periodic visits and
“encourage them to make further efforts.”37
Perhaps the most important of the huizhang’s tasks was to coordinate
prayers for the sick and the dying. The president was responsible not only
for contacting the priest to offer the sacraments to the infirm, but also for
ensuring that those at death’s door would benefit from the continual
prayers of other Christians. Just as members of devotional confraternities
in Europe were obliged to pray for the sick, the dying, and the dead of
their number, so the members of the Shengmu hui were entrusted with
praying for the souls of their confreres in times of mortal crisis. When a
Chinese Christian fell ill, the huizhang was to assemble the brothers to ex-
hort the infirm “to repentance and remorse” for his sins, invoking both
the pains of hell and the rewards of heaven. If it was impossible to sum-
mon a priest, the president was to lead the others in prayer, “crying out
the name of the Holy Trinity, invoking the Holy Names of Jesus and
Mary,” and praying to the guardian angels and patron saints to intercede
with God on behalf of the afflicted. When the soul was called to its eter-
nal reward, the huizhang was to organize a burial in strict observance of a
prescribed set of funeral norms.38
The capability to rally prayers at such moments was considered one of
the greatest benefits of participation in a Shengmu hui. Another important
reward was the assurance of a dignified funeral. China was a society that
placed considerable emphasis on the proper conduct of burial rituals and
respect for the dead. The pomp mandated by Chinese tradition was often
beyond the reach of plebeians, and those who made exuberant displays of
filial piety during burials could lead their households into bankruptcy. It
must have come as a great relief to the less prosperous Christians that
they could count on having their brethren at their funerals—without
significant expenditure.39 While the Jesuits often organized specialized fu-
nerary confraternities at their urban residences, in the countryside the
Christian duty of burying the dead fell directly to the members of the or-
ganizational groups.
Appended to the manuscript containing the statutes for the Shengmu
hui is a set of rules to be used in conducting Christian funerals. While it is
not clear if they were meant specifically for the Shengmu hui, these rules
give a good general picture of the funeral practices of Chinese Christians
in the later seventeenth century.40 The principal duties were split between
the eldest son of the deceased’s family and the huizhang. In keeping with
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Confucian traditions, the son was responsible for laying out the corpse
and providing a coffin “according to the financial means of the family.”
He was also to select the burial date and make the initial ritual gestures on
behalf of the soul of the deceased, which included lighting incense, saying
prayers, and inviting the confraternity to assist in the funeral. The role of
the president was to lead the others in saying the prayers listed in the rit-
ual, all of them drawn from the common prayer manual. He was also to
coordinate the ceremonies, putting the corpse into its coffin and organiz-
ing the burial procession. The president would also appoint individuals to
keep vigil over the coffin, making sure that they avoided all “drinking,
amusement, and idle talk” during their watch. If the family’s representa-
tive was so inclined, he could offer a meal for the confraternity, but the
rules cautioned that he should not exceed his means in making such a ges-
ture. Even if a meal was provided after the funeral, “one need not offer
wine.”41
The funerals of Chinese Christians needed to be handled delicately. On
these occasions, the millennial traditions of indigenous culture, which
had Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist roots, impinged most forcefully on
the practices of Tianzhu jiao. While not all Chinese customs were offen-
sive to the missionaries’ notion of orthopraxis, it was imperative for them
to set clear boundaries to distinguish Christian conceptions of due funeral
pomp from native practices. The Jesuits’ insistence on a strict and specific
order of prayers and rituals reveals how intent they were on ensuring that
funerals which took place beyond their gaze were conducted properly.
Here again, the missionaries relied on organizational brotherhoods to
check the intrusion of unacceptable customs, playing the supervisory role
that they themselves could not. All were exhorted to recall the Christian
teachings about the afterlife and consequently to eschew excessive displays
of grief. They were also reminded of the Jesuits’ “moderate” stance on the
Chinese Rites, namely, the custom of keeping ancestral tablets that re-
corded the names of the deceased. While the bereaved family and the
members of the confraternity were permitted to make gestures of respect
and were even allowed to place offerings before these tablets, it was made
clear that such gestures were merely symbolic. “How,” ask the rules point-
edly, “can the soul of the deceased really enjoy them?”42
Funerals also offered the Shengmu hui opportunities to make public
demonstrations of piety. To be sure, by denouncing Daoist and Bud-
dhist practices as forcefully as they did, the Jesuits drastically reduced the
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A Good Method and Order F


number of individuals who could be summoned to participate in Chris-
tian funeral processions. Forbidden to pay for the services of non-Chris-
tian ritual masters and their attendants, adherents of Tianzhu jiao had
only one another to rely on for staging burial pomp. It appears, however,
that the Jesuits and their Christians came up with a norm that balanced
the missionaries’ requirements for orthopraxis with their flocks’ demands
for display. The burial cortège envisioned by the rules included musicians,
flags, banners with pious slogans, and processional carriages, one bearing
the Holy Name and another a cross. The members of the confraternity
came next, “in order of seniority,” followed by the bereaved family and
the coffin. The carriage of the cross was the focus of devotions at the
gravesite, as the brotherhood recited prayers and performed the burial.
The role of the huizhang, standing in for a priest, was to sprinkle both the
grave and the coffin with holy water and lead the others in prayer. The
ceremony ended when the family’s representative knelt to thank the con-
fraternity members for their prayers and assistance.43
Teaching the Angels
So far, the focus has been on the devotional activities of adult Christians,
or, more specifically, adult male Christians. The analytical scope should
now be expanded, because Chinese Christianity was—and became even
more predominantly so as the seventeenth century wore on—a family re-
ligion. New organizational challenges arose when the mission church
shifted from a body of converts to a community in which Tianzhu jiao
was passed from mother to daughter and from father to son. The Jesuits
needed to ensure that all children of Christian parents would be educated
in the rudiments of their inborn faith. Compared to the challenge of per-
suading adults to abandon the religion of their forebears, this task was rel-
atively easy. Children came to the missionaries as tabulae rasae, free of the
encrustation of religious customs that would have to be chipped away by
argumentation. Teaching doctrine to children was therefore something
that could readily be delegated to auxiliaries.
There was no lack of adult Chinese Christians willing to take up the
task of indoctrinating children. In order to channel their good intentions
effectively, the Jesuits had to elaborate new teaching methods appropriate
to the mission field. This came to them naturally, in view of their experi-
ence as educators and their skills at structuring lessons. In Europe their or-
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der enjoyed renown for teaching doctrine to children; indeed, Jesuits
whose primary assignment was to hold impromptu doctrine classes in
town squares and city streets could be found across the Catholic world.
They used songs to inculcate prayers and encouraged their pupils to
memorize points of faith by distributing devotional objects to those who
gave correct answers. To be sure, the Jesuits neither invented nor monop-
olized doctrine teaching in Europe. They were one force among a host of
clerical and lay catechetical initiatives in the massive pan-European surge
in religious education that occurred in the early modern period.44 In
China, however, the Society’s methods of indoctrination were clearly the
first and foremost. It was no coincidence that when João da Rocha trans-
lated a doctrine dialogue (Tianzhu shengjiao qimeng), he selected a text
that had been written specifically for teaching children—and popularized
by a Portuguese Jesuit who left the most important theology chair at the
University of Coimbra, no less, to spend years leading doctrine-singing
children around the city of Lisbon.45
Seeing the success of the Shengmu hui in structuring communal devo-
tions, the Jesuits employed a confraternity model for doctrine teaching as
well. Starting as early as the 1640s, they began to establish Tianshen hui,
Confraternities of the Angels, to provide a uniform structure for children’s
spiritual education. It is somewhat of an exaggeration to call these groups
of children and teachers “brotherhoods,” rather than merely “classes,” but
the name itself seems to have been part of the Jesuits’ strategy for encour-
aging participation. It does not appear that the missionaries had written
statutes for these groups, at least not ones with the same degree of com-
plexity as those issued to the organizational hui or devotional groups. But
by using a special title and motivational tactics for children to learn their
lessons, the missionaries hoped to turn the memorization of the catechism
into a cause for “pious competition” among the younger followers.
It ought to be no surprise that the first Tianshen hui were founded by
Francesco Brancati to handle the pastoral challenges found in the Shang-
hai area. The Sicilian missionary published a catechism titled Tianshen
huike for use by the laymen and women who ran these groups. This book,
written in simple dialogue form, contains prayers and points of doctrine.46
Missionaries in other areas took their cue from Brancati and began form-
ing similar groups in the 1650s and early 1660s. For instance, the Jesu-
its in two other Jiangnan cities, Yangzhou and Changshu, had founded
Tianshen hui by 1660. That year Jean Valat created similar doctrine groups
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A Good Method and Order F


at Tai’an in Shandong Province. This Jesuit reported creating confraterni-
ties for boys and girls, “giving them all of the statutes and rules appropri-
ate for their capacities.” Valat could hardly contain his joy at seeing how
well the groups fulfilled their task. “Most of the boys and girls,” he noted,
“already know how to pray not only the Paternoster, Ave Maria, Credo,
and the Commandments, but also many other prayers from the daily
prayer book, and the Litanies of the Angels and of the Virgin.”47
One of the best descriptions of the Tianshen hui comes in a letter that
Simão da Cunha sent to Visitor Francisco Furtado from the mountainous
interior of Fujian Province in 1653. Cunha commented on how dismayed
he had been when he visited Dingzhou and found many children “who
had received holy baptism at a tender age but knew nothing of the Law.”
He was exasperated by the fact that parents did not teach doctrine to their
children: “It seems that they have imbibed a heresy found here in China,
which holds that fathers should not be masters for their sons.” His solu-
tion was to create a Confraternity of the Angels, which was to meet on the
third Sunday of each month. Cunha himself conducted the group’s first
meetings, and then passed on the teaching duties to a Christian adult.
Satisfied by the results in Dingzhou, the Jesuit proceeded to create such
hui throughout his mission district.48
The Tianshen hui that met at Cunha’s residence in Yanping convened
once a month on a Sunday afternoon. First, the children would report to
the church in the company of their parents and make prostrations before
the devotional images. Cunha noted that there was always an adult on
hand to teach them the appropriate prayers to say when bowing to the
icons of the Lord of Heaven and instruct them how to bless themselves
with holy water. When all of the children were quietly assembled in the
mission station’s reception hall, the priest would recite prayers for the pu-
pils to repeat. After this initial exercise, the Jesuit would ask individual
children questions about prayers and points of doctrine. In order to in-
spire them, Cunha set up a table with “prizes that they can see, such as
images, veronicas, books, rosaries.” Those who responded correctly re-
ceived prizes, while the others were told they would be rewarded when
they had memorized their prayers. At the end of Tianshen hui meetings,
two children would stand on a bench and recite the doctrine dialogue
found in their primer. Just before going home, all would say an act of con-
trition. A further benefit of these classes was that they contributed to in-
doctrinating adults. “The children teach many things to their parents,”
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wrote Cunha, “which they take like pills covered in sugar that otherwise
cannot be swallowed.”49
The satisfactory results produced by Confraternities of the Angels dur-
ing the 1650s and early 1660s led the Jesuits to mandate them throughout
the mission church. This move came in the late 1660s, when the mission-
aries’ exile forced them to delegate virtually all of their pastoral work to
their lay auxiliaries. In the rules and exhortations dispatched to Christian
communities from Canton, Vice-Provincial Feliciano Pacheco reminded
adults that those who loved their “children or younger brothers must love
their souls above all, and after that care for their bodies.” He encouraged
them to create Tianshen hui, insisting on the benefits that adult Christians
would receive from having children who knew Catholic prayers and doc-
trine in their midst. God was more likely to hear the prayers of children at
the bedside of a sick elder, he claimed, because “He is pleased with them,
as they have had very little contact with the world and are only lightly
contaminated with sin.”50
Pacheco’s instructions also included tips for setting up such teaching
groups. Each community should designate a fervent Christian, he sug-
gested, choosing an individual who belonged to a devotional confrater-
nity (not an organizational brotherhood). This person would be charged
with making sure that children attended Tianshen hui meetings and that
all families took turns at making snacks “for attracting and stimulating
the children,” that is, providing incentives likely to hold their attention.
Pacheco cautioned doctrine teachers “not to do too much, but to attempt
primarily to explain the principal truths of the religion to the children,
and the observance of the Ten Commandments.” Solid grounding in the
precepts of the Decalogue would inculcate the basic Christian notions
of morality, and that was essential. As if to underscore this sentiment,
Pacheco concluded his remarks on the Tianshen hui with the following
exhortation: “Mind their moral formation, that is the most important
thing.”51
By the early 1670s the mission church was a multigenerational body in
which Tianshen hui were an integral part of Christian life. This situation
was especially clear in the Jiangnan region, the cradle of innovation in
pastoral strategies. The response of François de Rougemont was to pur-
chase devotional objects periodically for the doctrine groups convened in
Changshu. His account book from the early 1670s contains entries of ex-
penditures for “sweets” and prizes intended for distribution at their meet-
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A Good Method and Order F


ings.52 In the Shanghai-Songjiang area, Candida Xu paid for the scores of
devotional objects used by Tianshen hui. According to her biographer,
Philippe Couplet, Xu donated “rosaries, agnus dei, images, crosses, med-
als, and other similar items of devotion to be distributed among the chil-
dren.” Each year the priests would hold a ceremony on the feast of Saint
Michael (September 29) at Shanghai’s Church of the Savior to distribute
these prizes to the area’s doctrine teachers.53 The presence of such groups,
however, was also felt in remote rural areas. In 1686 José Soares formed a
Confraternity of the Angels which met once each month in a village in
Shanxi Province. Evidently the country boys and girls took to the ques-
tion-and-answer method, “responding with much dexterity about the
prayers and mysteries of the Holy Law.”54
“Apostles for This Kingdom”
As the mission church began to expand significantly in the 1630s, the Jesu-
its made greater use of lay catechists for ministering to their Christians. To
be sure, they had long relied on eunuchs and women to catechize seg-
ments of the population with whom they could not deal in person. But
the reality of burgeoning numbers of Christians made the employment of
catechists a general phenomenon. These individuals took on the tasks of
teaching doctrine, providing oversight for local communities, maintaining
sanctuaries, and, at times, preaching to other Christians. Catechists also
engaged in proselytizing in the Jesuits’ stead—to the point that, by 1700,
they were the primary motor of the mission church’s expansion. In light of
this range of activities, the use of the term “catechists” is perhaps mislead-
ing. Yet from the missionaries’ perspective, their primary task was to pro-
vide instruction to other men, women, and children in basic Christian
doctrine, regardless of whether the objects of their attention were already
baptized. The other responsibilities that they accumulated should be un-
derstood as outgrowths from this principal function as the Jesuits were
forced to hand over an ever greater proportion of their duties to their lay
auxiliaries.
Visualize the organization of the mission church as a pyramid with a
handful of priests and coadjutors at its topmost level. At the second layer
of management extends the network of catechists. At the bottom one
finds the huizhang, the presidents of the organizational confraternities.
The distinction between the lower two levels is not entirely clear. It ap-
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pears that the social standing of the huizhang was higher than that of the
catechists, and that their positions within their local communities re-
flected the positions of respect they commanded. But while catechists of-
ten had responsibilities similar to those of the huizhang, they were depu-
tized by the missionaries for a greater range of duties. It is likely that while
most huizhang performed catechetical duties, catechists were not necessar-
ily entrusted with community organization.55 The primary differences be-
tween the two offices were the catechists’ doctrine teaching tasks, their
greater range of movement among a given set of Christian communities,
and the more personal nature of their relationship with the missionaries.
The same qualities distinguished them from the Vice-Province’s coadju-
tors. Whereas catechists shared many tasks with Jesuit brothers, they were
not bound by the Society’s vows. Moreover, there were far more catechists
in the service of the mission than there were coadjutors, especially after
the 1630s.
The Vice-Province’s Annual Letters include numerous accounts of the
catechists’ activities. Unfortunately, the sources shroud these men and
women in a cloud of anonymity, revealing more about their duties than
their identities. For instance, the 1636 Annual Letter speaks of a catechist
who happened upon a prospective convert while traveling through the
Shanghai countryside. When the Christian came across a woman who was
burning spirit money for her deceased husband, he entered her home
“and asked the woman what the useless fire was.” The woman reportedly
stated that she was merely obeying her spouse’s testament, but that had
not stopped “the devil from entering her house and making her child
sick.” Seizing the opportunity, the catechist told her of the Teachings
of the Lord of Heaven, healed the child with holy water, and was re-
warded with the conversion of the whole household.56 Another report
from Hangzhou in 1644 eulogized Paulo Li, a catechist who lived to be
more than eighty years old. Li had two principal tasks, namely, “to travel
constantly in search of new souls to baptize and to cultivate those of the
Christians.” In the missionaries’ estimation, he was most effective with
women of the elite, whom he addressed “with great energy and propriety
in the local tongue, using such apt comparisons that he always convinced
them.”57
As this last comment suggests, catechists were most valuable to the mis-
sionaries as native speakers of China’s myriad dialects. In addition to help-
ing the Jesuits address women, catechists often accompanied the priests
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A Good Method and Order F


through rural areas. In both cases they were indispensable intermediaries.
One revealing account of a missionary’s bond of friendship with his cate-
chist is found in the deathbed exhortation that Rodrigo de Figueiredo
made to a longtime auxiliary in 1639. The Portuguese Jesuit averred that
the man would soon reach paradise because of the years he had spent
“teaching and preaching to women about matters relating to Christ and
His mother.” Figueiredo then posed a set of rhetorical questions about the
catechist’s activities to prove his point: “Didn’t you preach and tell those
women that they should strive to gain glory? Were you not aware this only
comes after death? Well, now your time has come, be happy. You served
me and accompanied me all these years. What fruit did we cull from all
that wandering? By any chance, were we banqueted at the homes we went
to? Did you get money from those we visited? Did you wear silk? Did you
eat better, or were you better off because more people heard you and
learned from you? This was the hour you worked for, the one that comes
next is what you were striving to reach.”58
Figueiredo worked in Henan Province with more than one assistant of
this type. He was one of the first missionaries to create a confraternity de-
signed to train and supervise catechists. Figueiredo organized his group
in 1639, dedicating it to Saint Thomas with the purpose of nourishing
“preachers and catechists to serve as apostles for this province and for this
kingdom, just as Thomas did for the Orient.” The brotherhood’s twenty
members met twice each month at the house of one of their number for
praying, preaching, and discussing points of doctrine, as well as speaking
of “ways of moving the Christian community forward and spreading the
word of God.” On each occasion the catechists would draw up a schedule
of meetings with Figueiredo at his residence. The whole of the appointed
day was to be spent at the church, hearing mass, praying, and listening to
the missionary’s elaborations on different points of doctrine. Figueiredo
even wrote a textbook of sorts for his catechists, with lessons on themes
such as “the life of Christ, that of Our Lady, and the propagation of the
Law from the first day of the creation of the world until the present.”
Figueiredo’s disciples were entrusted with passing on the content of these
lessons to the rest of the flock at Kaifeng on Sundays, while individual
Christians awaited their turn to confess. According to him, groups would
form in the church to listen to the catechists talk—“one over here about
the practices and virtues of Our Lady; another over there about the tor-
ment and passion of her blessed son; this one listing the sons and descen-
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dants of Jacob; that one telling of the punishments He inflicted on Pha-
raoh to free His people from captivity, the miracles and marvels of Moses
when he crossed the Red Sea, what happened the rest of the way to the
Promised Land, the life of Joseph, and the stories of Tobias, Judith, and
Daniel.” In Figueiredo’s opinion, all who heard these lessons derived great
benefit from them. Even the children present were so well versed in these
stories that he was at pains to recall if more could be expected from their
peers in “any patio of students in Europe.”59
Missionaries in other parts of China tried similar strategies to coordi-
nate their catechists. Reports from the 1650s and 1660s reveal a general
impulse toward this sort of organization as the mission church expanded.
For example, in 1658 Girolamo Gravina created a Confraternity of the
Twelve Apostles at Changshu. He restricted membership to twelve cate-
chists whose goal was “to seek their own salvation with all their strength
and inclination.” More important, members were to channel their fer-
vor toward helping their neighbors spiritually. They set about this task
by proselytizing non-Christians and supervising their local coreligionists,
seeking the conversion of entire households where one or more members
had been baptized, and urging all Christians to confess at least once each
year. While their general goal was to “seek the conversion of heathens, es-
pecially their relatives and friends,” these Twelve Apostles had a special
monthly obligation either to “reinvigorate a lukewarm Christian or con-
vert a heathen.” Gravina claimed considerable success with this group,
telling of how a member took his task so seriously that one month he
brought in some thirty people to be baptized.60 Evidently the Changshu
Christians were also satisfied with the Twelve Apostles, since the confra-
ternity still met regularly in the 1670s, when François de Rougemont was
the local pastor.61
The valuable role of the Vice-Province’s catechists was confirmed dur-
ing the Canton exile. With the exception of the Dominican Luo Wenzao
and a handful of Jesuit coadjutors, catechists—even if acting in no more
than a surrogate, semiofficial capacity—were the only representatives of
the Catholic clergy among the Chinese Christians. Missionary sources
are agreed that they were responsible for bringing new members to the
church, yet the Jesuits were clearly worried about the way they carried out
their apostolic endeavors. Among the topics discussed by the men of the
Vice-Province in January 1668 was the need to ensure that all regional
churches (that is, the agglomerate of Christian communities administered
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A Good Method and Order F


by the priests at a given residence) had a catechist confraternity. It can be
inferred from this rule that the Jesuits hoped to devise some common
method of organizing and supervising their auxiliaries. In the late 1660s
they clearly saw the need to regularize Chinese Catholic practice and
therefore sought to impose conformity on the different forms of catechist
activity that had developed over the three preceding decades.62
A clear solution to that diversity would emerge fully only in the 1670s,
after the Jesuits returned to their residences to resume control of their
communities. By that time, however, the overburdened missionaries
needed more help than ever before from their doctrine-teaching auxilia-
ries. The catechists had proved their worth in supervising the religious ac-
tivities of their fellow Christians in the preceding years, and the return of
the priests confirmed them in their role as community overseers. In areas
with larger Christian communities, such as coastal Jiangnan, the Jesuits
elaborated a new system for regulating their auxiliaries. They instituted
groups called Confraternities of Saint Francis Xavier, or Sheng Fangjige
hui, to instill a sense of solidarity as well as to ensure mutual oversight
among the catechists. By bringing them together for periodic meetings
with the priests, the Jesuits also afforded themselves a certain degree of
quality control; they could verify that all of their catechists were teaching
doctrine correctly and were acting as proper representatives of the mis-
sionaries and their religion.
The most vivid account of the catechists’ confraternities is found in
Philippe Couplet’s description of the Shanghai church in the 1670s. In
that decade, the Flemish missionary states, he and his colleagues relied on
sixty catechists. All of these belonged to the Confraternity of Saint Francis
Xavier, which held its meetings in the presence of the priests at the city’s
main church. According to Couplet, this group was the “most important
of all” the congregations in the area. Its primary task was to make sure
that children born into Christian families were properly indoctrinated.
Each catechist was charged with visiting all the Christian households in
his district four times a year. Once each season the catechists would gather
in Shanghai to present written accounts of the state of each family. They
were to inform the priests whether or not there were devotional images
and holy water in every home and also to tell him if any of the Christians
had relapsed into “their old superstitions.” They were also responsible for
reporting any children who needed to be baptized and any elderly or
infirm individuals who needed “the remedies of the Church.” The cate-
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chists’ most difficult task is likely to have been their role as moral censors.
In their written evaluations, they were to inform the priest “precisely
about the behavior of every individual Christian.”63
The Shanghai Jesuits also employed a Confraternity of Saint Ignatius
Loyola to assist them in cultivating their Christians. Couplet records that
this group was composed of “bachelors, literati, and students” who sought
to inspire their peers with rhetoric. (While it is unclear whether mis-
sionaries in other areas relied on their more educated Christians in the
same manner, it seems likely.) The Shanghai group met on the first day
of each month at the missionaries’ residence to pray and exercise their
apologetical skills by raising doubts about their religion that they would
resolve together. The Jesuits would then supply them with tracts and
books for use in writing compositions and instruct them on matters relat-
ing to the “principal truths of the faith, its mysteries, and the most famous
feasts of the church.” Members would then produce treatises that they
would read aloud to the assembly, taking corrections from the missionar-
ies. Once they were equipped with approved texts, the Jesuits would send
them to preach on the following Sunday at the churches that they them-
selves were unable to visit. Couplet was particularly fond of this group,
noting that “the Chinese are greatly inclined to produce texts and recite
their compositions,” and that such exercises were good for “cultivating the
talents” of educated Christians.64
The increased reliance on lay auxiliaries inevitably created new chal-
lenges. The way catechists went about teaching doctrine was one of the Je-
suits’ main preoccupations. While the missionaries themselves all had
teaching experience and knew how to structure lessons, the same could
not necessarily be said for their surrogates. In the late 1670s they began to
air their frustrations on the matter. Ferdinand Verbiest lamented to a con-
frere that the catechists at the capital did “not usually keep much order”
during their explanations.65 To be sure, his view of their disorganization
was in all likelihood a corollary of his general appraisal of indigenous
forms of reasoning. Verbiest wrote to another colleague that, just as in the
canonical texts of indigenous philosophy, the Chinese typically explained
things using “backwards maxims, without a linked discourse.”66 Verbiest’s
solution to this problem was straightforward. In 1677 he published an “or-
der of catechizing” for his auxiliaries, called Tianzhu jiaoyao xulun.67
Verbiest’s concerns were echoed by the hierarchy of the Society’s Asian
missions in the 1680s. Prompted by events in Tonkin, where French
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A Good Method and Order F


Vicars Apostolic had rushed to transform native catechists into priests,
Visitor Andrea Lubelli (1628–1685) sent a circular letter to his subordi-
nates in 1681. Fearing that the Vicars appointed to China might try the
same tack in the Qing empire, he urged his confreres to educate their aux-
iliaries thoroughly. Insisting that the training of “good and fervent cate-
chists” was the “first of our cares and the greatest of our tasks,” Lubelli
outlined the skills that all of them had to be taught. In addition to a solid
grounding in doctrine, all needed to know necessary arguments to deploy
when addressing prospective converts, using “comparisons that suited the
capacities of their listeners.”68
Lubelli sought to ensure that Chinese catechists presented doctrine in a
logical fashion. They were to start by affirming the existence of God, the
eternal soul, and the divine punishment and rewards for human behavior.
After this preamble they were to discuss “the divine precepts which con-
form to reason” and refute the “superstitious errors and idols.” Only after
having persuaded their interlocutors of these basics were catechists to ven-
ture into more speculative territory and broach the topic of the mysteries
of the faith, such as the “Trinity, Incarnation, and Life and Death of the
Lord.” Like Verbiest, Lubelli insisted on thorough training for all auxilia-
ries, especially the more educated ones. Recalling his experiences with lite-
rati catechists at Canton, the Visitor remarked that “almost all” of them
spoke in an impenetrable manner. “In a half hour they want to say every-
thing,” Lubelli wrote, “but they do it in such a confusing way that those
who already know the mysteries leave their classes with muddled heads,
and those who come to hear the holy law for the first time even more
so.” And all this, he continued, “because we trust them since they are
literati!”69
The catechists’ assistance to the mission church was not necessarily
gratis. In addition to offering them lodgings, the Jesuits paid them a wage
to cover their living expenses. François de Rougemont’s account book
from the 1670s reveals emoluments to a number of catechists who worked
with him in the Changshu area. He employed male and female cate-
chists, who performed largely the same duties as the members of Shang-
hai’s Confraternity of Saint Francis Xavier. They made periodic visits to
Christian households, acted as interpreters in areas with different dialects,
and maintained village churches. They did not, however, all come from
the same social stratum or have the same financial wherewithal. Their
number included minor literati and physicians no less than individuals
who were blind and destitute. The Jesuit’s ledger indicates that he paid his
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catechists’ travel expenses (“I gave the catechist Francisco Fang Yuwang,
who was ordered to go to various locations, as travel money 0.720 tael”)
and gave some of them charity (“For Kin Martha, the catechist, as alms
0.600 tael”).70
To be sure, by mixing money into their transactions with catechists, the
Jesuits knew that they might draw a few bad pennies. The more optimis-
tic, such as José Soares, downplayed the significance of the financial aspect
of human relations. He insisted that the catechists’ sense of “charity for
their neighbors weighs more in their hearts than their interest or temporal
necessity.” If not, Soares argued, they would surely “spend their time in
some service or contract where they could draw a profit.”71 Men such as
Francisco da Veiga (1631–1703), a Portuguese Jesuit who spent part of his
career on Hainan Island, were more wary of the auxiliaries on their pay-
roll. While Veiga recognized the worth of a good catechist, he approved
only of those who esteemed “the office more than the benefice.” Those
who did not were a plague on the mission. “With their right eye on the
silver and their left eye on the doctrine,” he wondered, “what kind of
teaching can one expect?”72
Delegating the Power to Convert
By the last quarter of the seventeenth century, the crushing weight of the
Jesuits’ pastoral burdens made it impossible for them to carry out prosely-
tizing tasks in the manner of their predecessors. Since the performance of
the sacraments was their exclusive and inalienable duty, the Jesuits dele-
gated the task of evangelization and indoctrination to their auxiliaries.
They nevertheless aimed to retain a degree of control by grouping cate-
chists into Confraternities of Saint Francis Xavier. To be sure, by endow-
ing their auxiliaries with the authority to expound the principles of their
religion as well as perform ceremonies such as baptism, the missionaries
ceded an important part of their ritual power. One need only recall the
fierce resistance mounted by certain Jesuits to the idea of a native clergy to
be reminded how dangerous such moves were seen to be in some quar-
ters. In order to make sure that renegade catechists would not carry off
Tianzhu jiao in unorthodox directions, the missionaries opted for formal-
ism. They instituted special brotherhoods in which auxiliaries would be
examined on matters of doctrine and held to high standards of personal
piety and morality.
One of the best ways of understanding how the Jesuits employed the
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confraternity model to monitor their catechists is to look at the statutes of
one such brotherhood. In the same set of manuscripts containing the
Shengmu hui statutes and the funeral ritual previously discussed, one finds
a set of rules for a Confraternity of Saint Francis Xavier.73 Similar in for-
mat to the statutes of the organizational brotherhood, these rules consist
of a short preamble followed by eighteen points. Befitting a confraternity
of catechists, Xavier was presented as the paragon of evangelizing. Mem-
bers were reminded that the Basque missionary was a member of the Soci-
ety of Jesus “sent by order of the pope to preach the doctrine to Eastern
peoples.” God had endowed Xavier with the power to show others the
way to paradise, and He worked many miracles to corroborate the mis-
sionary’s message. Those who endeavored to honor Tianzhu and “save all
people” were therefore encouraged to emulate “the virtue of the saint.”
More important, they were heartily enjoined to “abide by the regula-
tions.”74
Prospective members of this catechist confraternity had to meet certain
conditions and undergo a probationary period. The group’s first rule set
the bar for the moral conduct of all brothers: they were to be models of
probity in their observance of the Ten Commandments and “all the other
rules of the Holy Teaching.” Postulants had to attend the group’s four sea-
sonal meetings and could join only after a year. They were urged to con-
sider the pious actions of the group’s members as “food for the soul” and
were warned that those who strayed into sin or experienced a crisis of faith
would suffer after they lost this divine nourishment. Those who joined
the group were instructed to “watch their words as if they were guarding a
treasure.” Since the essence of Christianity was to pass over their lips, they
were strictly forbidden to speak any “useless or idle words” to others. Ac-
cording to the statutes, the best way to avoid falling into disgrace was to
maintain an active spiritual life. Members ought to ensure that not only
they but all the members of their household as well “respectfully serve the
Lord day and night, recite prayers, say their confession, abide by the Ten
Commandments, and perform Holy Works properly.”75
In contrast to the Shengmu hui statutes, the catechist group’s rules give
little information about how the four yearly meetings were to be held.
Rather, they present a set of evangelizing techniques, with special focus on
the minimum criteria for admitting adults to baptism. By spelling out
these procedures in detail, the Jesuits hoped that their auxiliaries would
rely more on their discretion than their zeal. In other words, they wanted
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their catechists to make a careful examination of the reasons why individ-
uals sought baptism. Under ideal circumstances, catechists would let a
priest interview all potential converts to make sure they had been properly
indoctrinated. It was the auxiliaries’ job to verify that those whom they
presented to the missionaries expressed remorse for their sins and were de-
termined “to reject all pagan teachings.” They were to insist that submit-
ting to baptism without a sincere desire to obey Christian precepts “would
do no good.” Although only the Jesuits themselves were supposed to per-
form this ritual, they granted confraternity members the privilege of bap-
tizing people who were “critically ill.” Another provision permitted cate-
chists to perform secret baptisms in order to accommodate those who
sought to convert against their families’ wishes. All baptisms performed by
auxiliaries were to be reported to the missionaries, with the details of the
date of the ceremony, the hometown of the converts, and their family
name duly noted.76
Once the Jesuits endowed their catechists with ritual powers, the need
for discretion was even greater. Missionary sources suggest that the baptis-
mal ceremony was often understood in popular circles as a healing ritual.
Chinese sources also reveal that the sprinkling of holy water, whether or
not during the rite of baptism, was considered thaumaturgic.77 Jesuits of-
ten doubted the urgent pleas uttered by potential converts in the throes of
disease. “I am reluctant to baptize some sick people unless they are mori-
bund,” wrote one veteran, “since they only want to enter the Holy Law af-
ter spending what they had to implore the pagodes.” Too many begged to
be baptized so they might “attain bodily health, but they do not heal their
souls.” Their subsequent loss of fervor was proof enough for this Jesuit:
“They say they want it with their mouth, but they do not say it with their
heart.”78 But if the missionaries themselves had trouble gauging converts’
sincerity, how much more so their catechists?
The rules of the Confraternity of Saint Francis Xavier contain straight-
forward exhortations to caution when dispensing the rite of baptism. Two
rules warn against haste when dealing with the sick and dying. Catechists
were told that in these cases, baptism “cannot be given lightly.” Even at
times of mortal danger, they were to present a synopsis of Christian doc-
trine and wait for positive acknowledgment from the prospective convert.
Catechists were reminded that “holy water is medicine for healing the
spirit, not the physical body,” a tidbit that they surely passed on to their
afflicted interlocutors. The auxiliaries were urged to exercise greater cau-
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tion if they were summoned to the bedside of a sick individual and found
members of the Buddhist and Daoist clergy present. According to the
statutes, this was a sure sign that the diseased considered the Lord of
Heaven “an equal to a bodhisattva” and therefore did not deserve any of
the Christian’s prayers.79
Another important duty of the catechists was to supervise the religious
and moral behavior of the Christians in their appointed districts. Con-
fraternity members were instructed to “guide and watch” the souls of all
the children they baptized, in an attempt to ensure that their parents lived
up to the baptismal promises. Catechists were also given the power to
rebuke adult Christians who had “gone cold.” It is important to note
that the statutes provided for the members’ mutual supervision as well. If
a catechist knew of another who had done “something bad,” he was
instructed to admonish the transgressor “secretly and tactfully.” Those
who repeatedly refused such fraternal correction were to be reported to
missionaries.
There was more than one way for the catechists to abuse the powers ac-
corded them by the missionaries. The men of the Vice-Province were
acutely concerned about the public image of Tianzhu jiao and knew full
well the stakes involved in letting zealous laymen speak on their behalf.
But how were the missionaries to monitor the way their auxiliaries pre-
sented Christianity? While the Jesuits trusted the members of the Confra-
ternity of Saint Francis Xavier to watch their mouths “as if guarding a
treasure,” making sure that they did not circulate any unorthodox writ-
ings was another matter entirely. Here again, however, the missionaries
could only rely on trust and moral injunctions. Catechists were warned
against using “any unpublished writings” and were obliged to make nota-
tions of all sources for the materials used in their compositions. Con-
sidering that the Jesuits themselves had each of their Chinese publications
reviewed by three readers, their vigilance vis-à-vis would-be apologist au-
thors who lacked even basic education in theology is scarcely surprising.
Just as in the case of the literati confraternity at Shanghai described by
Philippe Couplet, catechists were to submit their writings for evaluation
at the group’s meetings. Yet the limits of this attempt at message control
were patently evident in the statutes’ final word on the matter. If pre-
sumption drove a member to distribute unapproved texts, his behavior
was to be considered “not in accordance with the rules,” with the inferred
punishment of expulsion.80
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The Universal Congregation
Writing to his European confreres in the early 1690s, Juan Antonio de
Arnedo presented an unflattering picture of the realities of missionary life
in China. He enumerated the routine burdens shouldered by the men of
the Vice-Province, especially at the larger mission stations, such as Shang-
hai. Particularly arduous, according to Arnedo, was being “shackled to the
confessional until midday” and afterwards being obliged to say mass, “fol-
lowed by a sermon and prayers.” He also mentioned “having to attend to
so many neophytes,” as well as being required to make laps around rural
circuits “in the cold and under the sun, all the while incurring many ex-
penses and molestations.” These, however, were among the more positive
aspects of missionary life. Arnedo also complained about having to man-
age the temporal affairs of a mission station, “the impertinence of the Chi-
nese, the unhappiness of some servants, and the disdain of many of this
nation.” Even more distressing were the “anxiety of being in charge of so
many churches, the laxity of many Christians, the apostasies of others,
and the opposition from the heathens.” Such drudgery, Arnedo insisted,
required “much spirit” of the missionaries since even the pluckiest often
became “bored with their lives.”81
Arnedo’s derogatory sketch is surprising—and not simply because it ap-
peared in an Annual Letter. His litany of complaints makes no mention of
the complex workings of the mission church. In fact, the loudest chord
that Arnedo strikes is a lament about the stultifying nature of his routines:
hearing confessions, saying mass, caring for a residence. He did not raise
his voice against the confusion of disorganized Christian communities.
Rather, his complaints were a veiled indictment of the very structures that
permitted the propagation of Tianzhu jiao in Qing China. If it were not
for the intricate organization of the mission church, Arnedo and his col-
leagues would not have been immersed in such dulling routines. They
would have faced a monstrous agglomeration of Chinese Christians and
might never have come to grips with the real problem of keeping them in-
doctrinated. But such a reality was unthinkable to those on the spot. By
the time the Jesuits’ China enterprise had passed its centenary mark in
the 1680s, its Christian communities constituted an intricate system of
interdependent parts reminiscent of the European clocks the missionaries
repeatedly laid before the Dragon Throne.
The Jesuits were the key that gave the initial impulse to the mission
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A Good Method and Order F


church, and they were the weights that kept its mechanism balanced.
They laid down its organization, provided their Christians with periodic
access to the sacraments, and, in their spare time, supplied at least a mini-
mum of pastoral supervision to their flocks. But most of the dynamism
behind the workings of the mission church came from the Jesuits’ auxilia-
ries. They were the ones who carried out the supervisory tasks that would
have been the local clergy’s responsibility, had there been more priests in
China. To give but one example, the forty-two village confraternities at-
tached to the Songjiang mission station strained the capacities of its resi-
dent Jesuit, Emmanuele Laurifice. The Italian priest therefore identified
eight doctrinally well-versed individuals from each of these Shengmu hui
and appointed them to supervise the comportment of their peers. The se-
lectees were obliged to visit the Christian households of their appointed
districts every three months. According to the Annual Letter for the late
1680s, they were to “ask about each family’s health in the name of the
priest, console the sick, make sure those in danger received the sacra-
ments, and exhort all to observe the Holy Law.”82 During their visits,
the deputies were to instruct children in doctrine. They were also told to
baptize all infants, even those who appeared healthy, because it was im-
possible for the priest to make trips to the countryside for administering
the sacrament to newborns, and “experience had shown that if they were
not cared for with this degree of punctuality, many would die without
baptism.”83
So the task of community oversight was delegated to catechists. Ac-
cording to one report, by the early 1690s there existed a congregation of
these auxiliaries “in almost all of the missions.”84 As should be expected,
the most intricate system of catechist coordination was found in coastal
Jiangnan. It appears that in the final years of the seventeenth century, the
standards had been raised. In order to join the Confraternity of Saint
Francis Xavier, one had to be of “known zeal, accompanied by good let-
ters and preaching talent.” But this was not all. Prospective catechists had
to pass an examination, given by the priests, which required them to de-
liver an extemporaneous sermon or apologetic discourse on some aspect
of Tianzhu jiao. Only those who defended their discourses “with dexter-
ity” were permitted to join the group. It was imperative that they not
cede ground in arguments with their non-Christian rivals or those who
doubted their truths. At least the Jesuits were pleased with the catechists’
work. “They can be called the root and flower,” enthused one missionary,
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“from whence sprouts the copious fruit that is harvested every year in this
most vast Christian community.”85
The indispensable cogs in the clockwork of the mission church were its
organizational confraternities. These groups were the Jesuits’ response to
the challenge of having to provide all of their Christians with access to the
confessional and the Eucharist at least once a year. Of the two sacraments,
confession was the more time-consuming by far for the priests, since it re-
quired individual encounters. It was the tens of thousands of men and
women requiring that kind of attention in the Shanghai area alone that
led Juan Antonio de Arnedo to lament that his confreres were “shackled to
the confessional.” It would have been impossible for the local priests
based in Shanghai to attend to this multitude had they lacked “a good
method and order,” the Spanish Jesuit noted. This particular community
was split into “more than one hundred confraternities,” each with its ap-
pointed superior whose duties were to visit Christians in nearby villages
and to attend monthly hui meetings.86
In other words, the Shanghai area had a plethora of Christian meeting
places where these organizational confraternities converged to say prayers
and receive the sacraments. According to a report from 1697, Francesco
Brancati’s former “diocese” had not ceased to expand, and its number of
sanctuaries grew apace. In addition to the three churches within the city
walls (one for men and two for women), there was also a church at the
cemetery where the Jesuits were buried, as well as sixty churches scattered
about nearby villages. There were also nineteen oratories, some of which
were “larger than the churches.” Another thirty hamlets with resident
Christians lacked “decent conditions” for saying mass. Those who lived in
them were instructed to head for the nearest sanctuaries “to hear the Di-
vine Word and fulfill their obligations,” that is, to confess and take com-
munion. These sacraments were administered by one of the four local
missionaries. In order to make them available to women, the elderly, and
the infirm, a priest would visit each of the sanctuaries once a year. Female
catechumens who had already been indoctrinated would also be baptized
on such occasions. The Shanghai Jesuits spent an average of four months
each year on these visits and another three months attending to the vari-
ous male confraternities by turn at the city’s residence church.87
While such elaborate systems of “parish” organization and visitations
were not uniformly necessary throughout the Vice-Province, each mis-
sionary was obliged to devise ways of dealing with female Christians.
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A Good Method and Order F


Their standard practice was to create separate sanctuaries for women,
most often called Shengmu tang, Churches of the Holy Mother, which
were located in close proximity to the Jesuits’ residences but not directly
connected to them. Often, the women’s churches were sizable structures,
reflecting the spread of Christianity among females. For instance, the one
in Nanjing, dedicated to the Immaculate Conception, was a substantial
building that had formerly been the principal church for male Chris-
tians.88 In 1693 the Christian women of the Qing capital paid for the con-
struction of a new church, one dedicated to the Annunciation and located
on the grounds of the Jesuits’ College of Peking. According to José Soares,
they funded the new church by “depriving themselves of their rings, pen-
dant earrings, buttons, and other gold and silver ornaments.”89 Twice
each year, the capital’s Christian women would gather for “universal con-
gregations,” attending mass together. During the rest of the year, they
met monthly (or, in some cases, weekly) in one of twenty-six different
women’s confraternities affiliated with chapels and oratories throughout
the city. In order to “avoid confusion,” each of these groups visited the
Church of the Annunciation in a predetermined order so that its mem-
bers could confess and take communion.90
By the turn of the eighteenth century, the mechanism of the mission
church had attained its ultimate degree of development. The springs (the
catechists), gears (the doctrine teaching groups), and cogs (organizational
confraternities) that maintained the dynamism of the practice of Tianzhu
jiao operated with a vigor that made the function of the missionaries
themselves seem negligible. To be sure, this was a community of Catholics
and could not be sustained solely by the actions of the laity, regardless of
their level of zeal. It needed priests, but the Jesuits knew that it did not
need many of them. In the flush of confidence that led Vice-Provincial
Antoine Thomas to petition his Roman superiors for a mere twenty-four
extra priests in 1703 was an implicit acknowledgment of the ingenious
method of organization that his confreres had used to structure their
church.91 Thomas and his brethren were well aware that the Chinese
Christians themselves were the driving force behind Chinese Christianity.
In contrast to the trend toward greater clerical influence in the lives of
early modern European Catholics, most of the Jesuits’ Chinese flocks were
responsible for their own piety. Thanks to the Shengmu hui, the Tianshen
hui, and especially the lay auxiliaries, the mission church could sustain it-
self, and even expand, without the missionaries. This is the reason why
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the Teachings of the Lord of Heaven did not disappear from China when
the Vice-Province was fatally transformed in the 1720s. It is no coinci-
dence that when a pair of European Jesuits were seized at Suzhou in 1748,
they were condemned to death for plotting sedition on the basis of a
particularly damning piece of evidence: Qing officials had discovered
Tristano d’Attimis (b. 1707) and António José Henriques (b. 1707) wan-
dering around the Jiangnan countryside with a map listing the local
Christian hui.92
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10
Brothers of Passion and Mercy
Martino Martini spent the better part of his years as a
missionary creating images of China for Europeans. In his richly illus-
trated Novus Atlas Sinensis, as well as in his vivid De Bello Tartarico, he il-
luminated the grandeur and tragedy of the world’s greatest empire. And at
the end of his life, he presented an equally dramatic vision of Europe to
the Chinese. In 1660 Martini oversaw the completion of a new sanctuary
in the heart of Hangzhou. During two years of construction, Chinese arti-
sans shaped local materials into a foreign-looking edifice. They erected an
imposing façade to dominate the Jesuits’ walled compound, whose height
was pierced by three arched doorways. Inside the church, the artisans
raised soaring vaults atop thirty thick columns, each with a pedestal and
capital in the style of ancient Greece and Rome. Martini ordered the
builders to leave room for fifteen lancet windows, then had craftsmen
fill them with mother-of-pearl panels carved so delicately “that they are
transparent and lustrous.” An altar was set up in each of the church’s
three naves. Above the high altar hung an imposing gilt-framed retable
of Christ the Savior. The lateral chapels on either side of the transept
contained portraits of the Madonna and the Archangel Michael, paint-
ings most likely imported from Macau or Goa. According to the Jesuits,
Chinese visitors were particularly taken with the triumphal arches that
connected the interior columns. Like the church’s other features, they
claimed, this was “something never seen before in China.”1
That the beauty of their sanctuary drew the attention of connoisseurs


in the Jiangnan region must have pleased the missionaries, but the pri-
mary reason for their satisfaction with the new church derived, no doubt,
from observing how the city’s Christians used it. Just like Catholic
churches in Europe, the Hangzhou sanctuary was at once the focal point
of a community and a composite of ritual spaces claimed by a number of
devotional groups. At one side of the church was a secluded chapel dedi-
cated to the Holy Crucifix and used by a penitential group. Its members,
described by the Jesuits as the “most devout and fervent” of their flock,
gathered on Fridays to hear mass, say prayers, and sing the Litanies of the
Passion. Afterwards they performed flagellation “with such contrition as
to provoke tears of devotion even in the most stubborn and taciturn.” An-
other group, a Marian sodality, gathered on Saturdays at the altar of the
Blessed Virgin located in the main sanctuary to attend mass amid bil-
lows of incense. A third brotherhood, dedicated to dispensing charity,
also claimed a part of the church. This group kept a locked coffer in the
sanctuary, where its members put their obligatory donations. Once each
month, its leaders withdrew funds for assisting poor Christians while a
missionary kept watch. The donations were meant to succor the commu-
nity’s less affluent members in times of illness or to buy coffins for them
and “meet the other expenses of their funerals.”2
While Martini’s church stood out among the Vice-Province’s other
sanctuaries for its beauty, it was hardly unique in the number and variety
of devotional groups that it housed. Across China, the Jesuits’ mission sta-
tions were meeting points for a host of congregations aimed at fostering
piety. It should come as no surprise that specialized devotional groups
were formed among the urban adherents of Tianzhu jiao. After all, they
enjoyed almost continual pastoral care from the missionary who lived in
their midst, and they heard masses and said their confessions with far
greater frequency than rural Christians. The practice of Christianity for
those who lived in the shadow of the Jesuits’ residences was therefore far
more varied than in the countryside. On top of the standard prayer rou-
tines that were proper to their organizational confraternities, urban Chris-
tians might also channel their fervor through other, more demanding
forms of piety, such as the obligation to confess and receive the Eucharist
regularly, the public exercise of charity, or the practice of communal self-
mortification—all beneath the gaze of the priests. For the Jesuits, such ex-
pressions of fervor were the clearest reward for their missionary labors.
They encouraged the cream of their crop to serve as models of piety to the
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Brothers of Passion and Mercy F


rest of their followers, hoping that the example of the few would act as
leaven for the spiritual progress of the many.
The best way for the Jesuits to supervise and direct intense expressions
of piety was through hui, associations. In this regard, too, they benefited
from that same Chinese penchant for social organization that had enabled
them to use Brotherhoods of the Holy Mother as building blocks for the
mission church. Whether at the missionaries’ suggestion or of their own
volition, the more fervent Christians created devotional confraternities
from the first decades of the mission onward. The Jesuits’ initial outreach
to the educated elite, especially in the cities where they opened their
first residences, made this a logical development. The social ground had
been more than sufficiently prepared for the burgeoning of Christian
confraternal activity through the profusion of charitable groups and liter-
ary academies—not to speak of the devotional groups of Buddhist or
Daoist inspiration that also flourished in late Ming China, drawing mem-
bers from all levels of society. Indeed, the creation of mutual interest as-
sociations or religious brotherhoods was, in the apt phrase of Nicolas
Standaert, a Ming “national pastime.”3 As Standaert has noted, with their
devotional groups the Jesuits were not creating new forms of religious ex-
pression in China ex nihilo but rather reinforcing an indigenous tradition
that suited their religious goals.4
Yet one should not insist exclusively on the Chinese character of these
devotional groups and thereby risk obscuring the parallels between the
practice of confraternal piety in Catholic Europe and its counterpart in
the mission church. The China Jesuits were products of a spiritual milieu
in which devotional confraternities were the premier form of communal
piety. They belonged to a religious order known for its strong predilection
toward this form of lay religious activity. Moreover, the Society of Jesus
insisted that its novices participate in student confraternities during their
academic formation. The confraternal movement—or, more specifically,
the push to replace occupational groups with devotional ones in the late
sixteenth century—was one of the hallmarks of the Catholic Reforma-
tion, and the Jesuits were among its greatest proponents. Not only did the
Society seek to transform existing modes of piety through its confraterni-
ties, but its members aimed to carry out the ambitious project of the
“spiritual reformation of the republic” as well by propagating new forms
of lay religiosity.5 They were sure that the best way to bring about such a
change in the greatest number of people was to organize confraternities
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which obliged members to rigorous prayer routines and frequent recep-
tion of the sacraments. Just as they regimented students in their class-
rooms, the Jesuits charged the members of these groups with mutual
moral supervision. Here, too, they hoped that a spirit of “pious competi-
tion” would take hold and gradually ratchet up the degree of fervor.6
The confraternities that gathered in the Hangzhou church in 1660 were
therefore the products of the intertwining of two distinct cultural strands,
one Chinese and the other European. If one conceives of early modern
Catholicism as the mixture of equal parts devotion, doctrine, and ritual,
then the activities of the Jesuits’ Chinese brotherhoods represent that reli-
gious compound in full. But what were the devotions conducted by these
groups? In what ways did their forms of piety give outward expression to
specific Christian teachings? In short, how did their piety make them an
example for their coreligionists? The various forms of confraternal piety
that were practiced in the Hangzhou church and other sanctuaries like it
were the product of a process of evolution that stretched back five de-
cades. They did not, however, represent the final stage in the development
of group devotions sponsored by the China Jesuits. By the end of the sev-
enteenth century, according to some of the missionaries, the level of com-
munal spirituality achieved by their Chinese Christians was comparable
to that of the “most devout congregations of Europe.” For José Soares, this
was nothing short of a miracle. After all, he wrote from Peking in 1697,
the Jesuits’ devotional groups had cultivated mature “fruits of piety from
tender plants sprouting amid thorns,” reaping a crop of the type usually
produced after a long time by seedlings “grown in good earth.”7
Drawing up the Rules
The emergence of devotional confraternities was a natural result of the
slow growth of the mission church in the early seventeenth century.
For three decades after 1582, the Jesuits’ flock barely breached the one
thousand–member mark. But while this lack of quantity disturbed the
missionaries and their superiors, it permitted the priests to focus on
the quality of their converts’ religious practices. That the earliest devo-
tional groups should appear in the cities where the Jesuits opened their
first residences is not surprising. It was a logical development in Peking,
where Matteo Ricci gave uninterrupted pastoral care to a handful of con-
verts from his arrival in 1601 until his death nine years later. Such contin-
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Brothers of Passion and Mercy F


ual interaction sparked a desire for more complex forms of devotional
expression. After all, Ricci had not been shy in encouraging his early con-
verts to engage in meditative prayer—to the point of directing some of
them through part of Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, a challenge for
many if not most contemporary European Catholics.
The first devotional group was a Marian sodality instituted at Peking
on September 8, 1609, the feast of the Nativity of the Virgin. According to
Ricci’s diary, a court attendant named Lucas Li voiced his desire to start a
hui in which he and his coreligionists might make public acts of charity.
“For many days he discussed this work with his companions, drawing up
rules according to their custom,” recorded the Jesuit, “which he showed to
Father Matteo for him to emend and accommodate to Christian norms.”
Among the stipulations that Ricci added to Li’s statutes were “some points
about confessing, praying, and receiving new members into the congrega-
tion.” As was fitting for a charitable group in the late Ming period, one of
the principal aims of Li’s brotherhood was to bury deceased church mem-
bers “with pomp and solemnity.” Another was to offer alms to poor
Christians; each member was required to make monthly donations to a
fund for such expenses. The group had a further obligation to deco-
rate the city’s sanctuary with “wax, perfume, and flowers” on feast days
throughout the year. On the first Sunday of every lunar month, the so-
dality members gathered at Li’s house to hear a sermon from one of the Je-
suits and be given answers to their questions about Tianzhu jiao.8
The description of this Peking brotherhood clearly reveals its twin Chi-
nese and European sources of inspiration. Lucas Li likely conceived of his
confraternity as a Christian version of the other hui which were legion in
late Ming China. The Jesuits recognized this impulse as typical for their
converts, especially the members of the elite. In 1602 Diego de Pantoja in-
formed his confreres in Spain that many high-ranking mandarins “like
nothing better than to speak of virtuous things, and so gather, in groups
like confraternities, to discuss them.” During these meetings, some would
give talks and others would debate the best ways “to govern, and to attain
virtue.”9 Pantoja was referring to literati groups, such as the Tongshan hui
(Society for Sharing Goodness) or the Guangren hui (Association for
Spreading Benevolence), which were inspired by traditional Confucian
ideals and contemporary morality books. Myriad Renhui (benevolent so-
cieties) could be found across China. They were especially thick on the
ground in areas with concentrations of literati, such as Peking and the
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Jiangnan region. Without question, they were responsible for an increase
in social awareness among members of the elite and a reinvigoration of
charitable giving.10 Other literati groups were more explicitly dedicated to
sharing the pleasures of erudition through recitations of poetry or prose.
In either case, their worthy actions dismayed Pantoja. It “breaks the
heart,” he insisted, to witness such talk of virtue among individuals who
lacked “the necessary remedy” for their souls.11
No doubt Lucas Li was also partly inspired by indigenous forms of
communal religious expression. In late Ming times there was a widespread
revival of Buddhism, both at the monastic level and in popular milieux,
where Buddhist associations flourished.12 Groups such as the Nianfo hui
(Society for Reciting the Name of the Buddha) and the Fangsheng hui (As-
sociation for Releasing Life) could be found throughout China. Similar to
their counterparts among Catholic confraternities, these groups followed
specific devotions and invoked different aspects of religious teachings:
the Nianfo hui stressed the continual invocation of Amida Buddha; the
Fangsheng hui sought to prevent the killing of animals by purchasing and
freeing them.13 Astute observers that they were, the missionaries were
aware of the profusion of religious groups. Their reports describe groups
such as one in Jiangzhou, Shanxi Province, which counted more than one
hundred members who gathered to fast and pray “with special supersti-
tions” to a Buddhist deity.14 The members of another hui assembled on
certain days “to recite their doctrines and prayers.” The Jesuits were forced
to acknowledge at least one praiseworthy aspect of these non-Christian re-
ligious activities. Prayers were sung at these meetings, they wrote, “with
such order and harmony that they seem like the choruses of our European
religious.”15
Li’s Peking confraternity also had characteristics proper to devotional
congregations in Europe. Nicolas Trigault recorded that Matteo Ricci had
appended to Li’s statutes some rules “taken from the Roman sodality of
the Annunciation.”16 This organization was the Society’s flagship confra-
ternity, the Prima Primaria of an archconfraternity with branches in every
Jesuit college throughout the world. Its formal name was the Congrega-
tion of the Annunciation, and its first chapter had been founded by Jan
Leunis at the Society’s Roman College in 1563.17 In the caput mundi it was
known under its colloquial name, the Annunziata, and in Portuguese do-
mains as the Annunciada. As former students and teachers in their order’s
schools, the China Jesuits were familiar with the rules of this congregation
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and were quick to adapt them for the purposes of shaping communal pi-
ety in the Ming empire. The flexibility of the confraternity model had
long been proven by the Jesuits in Europe, where it was employed not
only for students but for ordinary laymen and women as well.18
What was the nature of devotional confraternities in early modern Eu-
rope? Marc Venard has defined them according to a set of criteria that dis-
tinguishes them from the occupational confraternities of the late medieval
period. The goal of the devotional groups was to stimulate individual and
collective piety, that is, to serve as a forum for mutual moral and spiritual
encouragement. Banqueting and nondevotional activities were therefore
prohibited. In order to encourage people to join, no financial or occupa-
tional restrictions were placed on membership, and members were not
constrained to stay in the group under pain of sin. In addition to praying,
fasting, and receiving the sacraments, members at times engaged in vari-
ous forms of self-mortification, including flagellation.19 The branches of
the Jesuits’ Prima Primaria had all of these qualities; indeed, they were
conceived as “seminaries of all virtue and sanctity,” according to the pre-
amble to the statutes of the Annunciada at the Colégio de Espirito Santo
in Évora. The students who belonged to it (among whom were included
more than a few future China Jesuits) were to benefit from “the company
of many good people” whose example would spread the ardor for virtue
throughout the group. Annunciada members were obliged to participate
in weekly prayer meetings, attend mass daily, take communion at least
once per month, and confess every other week—pious exercises designed
to make members “a light to others,” permitting them to lead their peers
on “the path to heaven.”20
The principal European element introduced by Matteo Ricci into Lucas
Li’s hui was an insistence that its members receive the sacraments regu-
larly. As in Europe, this requirement aimed to encourage individuals to
pray often, lead pious lives, and submit to the spiritual direction of their
pastors. The members’ duty to confess often enabled the Jesuits to verify
that their moral and spiritual demands were met, while the obligation to
take communion frequently was a prod to introspection. According to
Ricci, these demands paid off. He averred that it was the Peking sodality’s
prayer meetings and reception of the sacraments that caused the spiritual
state of its forty members to improve every day. Once they saw how suc-
cessful the group at the northern capital was, the Nanjing Jesuits worked
with the more devout members of their flock to create a similar congrega-
tion in 1610.21
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It did not take long, however, for some of the Chinese aspects of the
court confraternities to begin to trouble the missionaries. After all, Ricci
had merely introduced devotional criteria into the Peking group’s charter.
He and his colleagues had no clear picture of what their Christians would
do at their meetings. But the court sodalities were committed to their
charitable vocation, and so demanded regular financial contributions, just
like Confucian benevolent societies. Moreover, in keeping with Chinese
traditions of conviviality, the brothers held banquets at their meetings. It
was not long before the Jesuits set about “reforming” the two groups in
the same way that occupational confraternities in Europe had been either
extinguished or transformed into devotional brotherhoods over the course
of the sixteenth century.22 As early as 1612, Niccolò Longobardo reported
that the Peking sodality had been “reduced to the style of the congrega-
tions in Europe.” He further noted that the members did not “collect
money or bring things to eat.” But as confirmation of their commitment,
Longobardo added that they had not lost fervor as a result of these
changes, nor did they stop coming to meetings. The Nanjing group, how-
ever, resisted any immediate changes, since its members “thought it well
to collect money and eat something like a collation on meeting days.”
Nevertheless, the brothers promised the Jesuits that they would adopt the
ways of the Peking sodality before long.23 In the end, the combination of
these changes and the spiritual demands on sodality members made the
Jesuits’ devotional confraternities different from their Chinese counter-
parts of Confucian and Buddhist inspiration.24
A “Holy Envy”
If the Jesuits had any doubts about the value of their first confraternities
for sustaining and inspiring the rest of the mission church, these were dis-
pelled in the wake of the Nanjing affair. During the years when the mis-
sionaries were in seclusion, the two sodalities continued their prayer rou-
tines and charitable activities. Jesuits who visited Peking and Nanjing after
1618 reported that although their members were forced to keep a low
profile, the groups continued to meet in private homes “to discuss the
things of God.” Periodically, a Jesuit coadjutor would attend these meet-
ings to respond to questions about Tianzhu jiao and “offer consolation
with a spiritual talk.” In Nanjing, where the memory of persecution
was still fresh, the sodality played an even more important role. Fran-
cisco Furtado claimed in 1620 that its members were wholly responsible
373
Brothers of Passion and Mercy F


for “conserving and carrying forward” the local church.25 The brothers
showed their mettle again during the final flare-up of persecution in 1622.
They gathered regularly for prayers and, in addition, visited sick Chris-
tians and organized funerals.26
Although the Jesuits were impressed by the vitality and durability of
these groups, they were not in a hurry to establish them everywhere. In
fact, the political climate of the mid-1620s was unfavorable to creating
hui, especially among literati Christians. The Ming crackdown against the
reforming mandarin faction known as the Donglin Academy in 1625 af-
fected the Jesuits’ plan to encourage new devotional groups. For the re-
maining years of the Ming era and on into Qing rule, the term hui had
connotations of sedition and rebellion. As the missionaries informed the
readers of their Annual Letter in 1626, the Tianqi emperor had expressly
banned literati gatherings, “which have always been suspect in China.”27 It
would therefore take a considerable effort at public relations for the Jesuits
to disabuse suspicious authorities of the notion that their hui, many of
which had literati members, were different from those behind the interne-
cine bureaucratic strife of the 1620s.
But threats from on high did little to curb the Chinese Christians’ urge
to create new confraternities. For instance, in 1625 Gaspar Ferreira grudg-
ingly acceded to demands from some members of his Jiangxi Province
flock to start up a new confraternity for praying the rosary. His condition
was that the group not call themselves a hui since the term was “so hated,
thanks to the revolts in the South that surround the court.”28 Three years
later a group of Christians at Peking instituted a charitable congregation,
dedicated to Our Lady of Piety, which distributed funds to poor church
members for medical or funeral expenses.29 Even prominent Christians
such as Yang Tingyun founded Christian discussion groups during this
period—perhaps not all that surprising a gesture, as this mandarin had al-
ready shown his willingness to buck official decrees by sheltering the Jesu-
its during the Nanjing affair.30
In the end, the Chinese Christians’ desire to form new devotional
groups gradually wore down the Jesuits’ fears of an official backlash. By
the time Visitor André Palmeiro’s final directives to the missionaries were
issued in 1631, his stipulation that priests in the provinces not “insti-
tute confraternities without special orders from the Vice-Provincial” was
moot.31 The collapse of Ming authority, especially severe outside the im-
perial capitals, was as obvious to the Jesuits as the rumblings of war from
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beyond the Great Wall. Rather than deny their Christians the opportunity
to engage in communal devotions, in the 1630s the Jesuits actively began
to encourage the creation of new groups throughout the mission church.
These new bodies were clearly different from the organizational
Shengmu hui that began to appear around the same time, since devotional
confraternity members were obliged to receive the sacraments more often.
For instance, Pedro Ribeiro founded one group for men and another for
women at Shanghai in 1636. Both were dedicated to the Virgin; hence, in
all likelihood, they were called Shengmu hui. Members were required to
attend mass, hear sermons, and confess monthly. The two prefects of the
men’s group were charged with visiting sick Christians and distributing
alms to the poor. The first members of the women’s group were four
granddaughters of Xu Guangqi along with their female children and do-
mestics. They too gathered monthly to confess, attend mass, and listen to
a sermon. Both confraternities shared the Jesuit devotional practice of se-
lecting the name of a saint whose feast day fell in a particular month to
serve as a temporary patron.32
The 1630s also saw the beginning of the spread of penitential groups
throughout the mission church. These congregations typically invoked
the Passion and provided a venue for the practice of bodily mortification,
such as flagellation. Resurrecting the memory of the first such group, one
that had been founded by Lazzaro Cattaneo in Yang Tingyun’s chapel in
1618, Francisco Furtado instituted a penitential confraternity at Hangzhou
in 1636.33 He dedicated a special chapel inside the city’s main church
where its members could conduct their exercises beyond public view. The
group met once a month on a Friday to attend mass, hear a sermon, and
practice discipline. According to that year’s Annual Letter, the members
(whose number included some women) competed among themselves for
devotional rigor, making displays of penitential zeal with instruments that
were “severe enough to be frightening.” The Hangzhou Jesuits had to in-
tervene at times “to apply a brake to the fervor,” seizing their fearsome
lashes.34
Christians elsewhere in China practiced other forms of penitential pi-
ety. In Kaifeng, for instance, Rodrigo de Figueiredo administered a Broth-
erhood of the Holy Cross that had been founded in 1639 by the “eight
principal and most devout” men of that city. The group’s leader was a rich
youth who brought a large wooden cross with him every time he attended
mass. On Sunday mornings he would emplace it in the church courtyard,
375
Brothers of Passion and Mercy F


[To view this image, refer to  
the print version of this title.] 
 
 
 


where he and his confreres would kneel to pray the Litanies of the Passion,
take turns kissing the foot of the cross, and lash themselves in unison.
When they had finished these pious exercises, one of them would give a
short talk on some aspect of the Passion. According to Figueiredo, each of
the brothers would carry the “heavy and holy wood of Our Redemption”
by turns while the priest said mass.35
The mission church’s most widespread form of confraternal activity was
perhaps the structured exercise of charity. To analyze charitable groups to-
gether with devotional groups is, however, somewhat problematic, since
they do not explicitly meet the definitions of communal piety as they have
been presented here. Charitable confraternities during the 1630s were, by
and large, cut according to the Chinese mold; many were, in effect, tradi-
tional groups whose members happened to be Christians. Charitable con-
fraternities from that period do not appear to have demanded a significant
degree of devotional rigor. Nevertheless, the public practice of the corpo-
ral works of mercy (a standard element in Jesuit catechetical teaching) was
a demonstration of personal piety that went beyond the bounds of what
was expected from members of organizational confraternities. While the
missionaries reserved their highest praise for the members of their peni-
tential groups, they did not pass over the contributions made by members
of charitable confraternities for ensuring church cohesion. To be sure, the
activities of the latter were directed outward rather than inward. The pur-
pose they espoused was to distribute alms and attend the funerals of poor
Christians, or, to put it differently, to ensure that poverty was no barrier
to the proper practice of Tianzhu jiao.
The Jesuits were not blind to the manifestations of confraternal charity
rooted in native traditions. Chinese forms of social assistance constituted
the framework for the development of Christian charitable groups, even if
the missionaries described those groups in terms of European models of
public piety. The Jesuits were familiar with Renhui, benevolent societies
inspired by commonplace notions of morality as well as by the explicit
standards of Confucian ethics. For example, António de Gouvea wrote in
377
Brothers of Passion and Mercy F
Woodcut print of the Agony in the Garden in Method for Reciting the Rosary (Song
nianzhu guicheng), appended to João da Rocha, Instruction for the Young on the Holy
Religion of the Lord of Heaven (Tianzhu shengjiao qimeng), 1619.


the 1640s about a Zhejiang literati association called “Tum Xen Hoei”
(one of the multitude of Tongshan hui in contemporary China) that was
devoted to acts of charity. Four times during the year, the literati and re-
tired mandarins who made up the hui would meet to discuss virtue and
make their donations. A roll of the group’s expenditures was printed sea-
sonally. What impressed Gouvea most was the “order, fidelity, and punc-
tuality” of this accounting system, a method that made its financial officer
seem like “a diligent head of the Holy Misericórdia.”36
The Jesuit’s comparison of the Tongshan hui to this Portuguese charita-
ble institution makes sense, since the Misericórdias were lay-run societies
responsible for a host of activities that ranged from providing dowries to
poor girls and paying for the funerals of the destitute to administering the
estates of deceased members. While membership in this Portuguese group
was not the same as being in a European devotional confraternity, it did
come with a number of semiannual sacramental requirements attached.
Moreover, the Misericórdia’s activities were performed with clerical over-
sight and repeated exhortations to greater piety.37 For the Vice-Province’s
Portuguese priests, this was the principal model of charitable activity, but
they did not consider it problematic to build on native foundations. Af-
ter all, as Gabriel de Magalhães wrote about another literati group in
Zhejiang, indigenous works of mercy such as “giving coffins for the desti-
tute to be buried in” were but one step removed from what adherents of
the Tianzhu jiao were encouraged to do. In his eyes, a group with such
laudable aims had to have been founded by a Christian, or at least “one
who would soon be.”38
Chinese Christians, especially those from the ranks of the elite, found
ready parallels between late Ming patterns of social assistance and Chris-
tian teachings on charity. The Confucian ideal of benevolence (Ren) was
linked with the corporal works of mercy. The statutes Wang Zheng wrote
for a Renhui combined the streams of Chinese and Western morality, di-
recting its members toward contributing to “the highest Ren through
which the Lord of Heaven loves man” by performing “the meritorious
work of loving others.”39 While it is unclear if Wang actually instituted a
group based on these rules, there is no doubt that Christians elsewhere in
China did establish charitable confraternities. One was founded at Peking
in 1636 by a group of wealthy church members. According to that year’s
Annual Letter, this group was a fountain of charity whereby “the poor and
needy are helped, with great edification and glory of Our Lord.”40 The ca-
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lamities of the late 1630s and 1640s offered more opportunities for the ex-
ercise of charity elsewhere in China. For example, at Nanchang a Confra-
ternity of Piety had its hands full feeding the hungry (one of the Seven
Corporal Acts of Mercy) in 1643, “as much for the lack of rations due to
drought as with the revolts of the rebels who entered the province again
over the border with Huguang.”41
Charitable groups also attended to burying the dead, assisting the dy-
ing with their prayers and exhortations, and making dignified funerals
possible for all Christians. This form of charity was particularly important
in China, where the cult of the dead figured so prominently.42 It is worth
recalling that one of the principal duties assigned to Lucas Li’s Peking
brotherhood in 1609 was to participate in Christian funerals. Similar obli-
gations were written into the statutes of charitable groups in later decades
as both a consolation for destitute church members and a shield against
outside criticism. When Simão da Cunha became aware of the rumors cir-
culating in the inland districts of Fujian Province that the followers of
Tianzhu jiao employed inadequate ritual at funerals, he responded by cre-
ating Confraternities of Piety. The members of these groups were to at-
tend burials, making a show of singing the litanies and wearing mourning
attire. “In this way,” wrote Cunha in 1653, “the relatives of the deceased,
even if they are heathens, remain quiet, seeing how we commemorate the
dead, because until now they thought that we kicked them into the grave
without any ceremony, like dogs.”43
As suggested earlier, many of the devotional confraternities that were
created in the 1630s, 1640s, and 1650s were sisterhoods formed for the
communal exercise of charity, penitence, or piety. It is unclear, however, if
the devotional initiatives of Christian women were not merely outgrowths
of the activities of the organizational Shengmu hui. In any event, mission-
ary sources frequently record the creation of new groups with distinct
spiritual or charitable aims that went beyond the standard prayer routines
and sacramental obligations of the Jesuits’ female “parishioners.” For in-
stance, in the 1640s a group of women at Xi’an instituted a confraternity
to succor those Christians most affected by the upheaval in the northwest-
ern provinces. Among its other pious works, this group regularly “gave
food to thirteen poor women.”44
So eager were the women of Xi’an to manifest new forms of communal
religious expression that their pastor, Inácio da Costa, accused them of be-
ing afflicted with “a holy envy.” Whenever they saw the local men creating
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Brothers of Passion and Mercy F


any new confraternity—“or making any act of devotion out of the ordi-
nary”—they conspired among themselves to do the same. Costa cited the
three groups of elderly women who met, as the title of their hui made
clear, in “preparation for death.” Members of these groups fasted before
meetings and performed other acts of mortification. All of them had
lashes with which they whipped themselves, and, what impressed the mis-
sionary even more, some made examinations of conscience.45 Women’s
groups with similar devotional practices were established in other Chinese
provinces. A female hui administered by Simão da Cunha at Yanping
in Fujian Province met regularly to “read lessons from holy books in
public, hold spiritual lectures, and conduct many penitences.” In short,
the Jesuit averred, the women “appeared to be a convent of well-reformed
religious.”46
“Such Decency and Composure”
The flowering of confraternal devotional activity in the mission church
during the years of the imperial transition was a mixed blessing for the Je-
suits. On the one hand, they were pleased to see a nucleus of fervent men
and women form in each of their Christian communities. On the other,
the missionaries could not entirely regulate either the spread or the form
of these hui. No doubt they found it easier to extend pastoral care to the
devout in groups rather than individually. But the urge to create hui
among the members of the mission church appears to have been stronger
than the Jesuits’ capacity to exercise control over them, as revealed in the
description of the Shaanxi Province mission station in the 1656 Annual
Letter. Whereas the missionaries at Xi’an were clearly pleased with the dif-
ferent brotherhoods they administered, they could not offer much infor-
mation about “the many and varied ones that both men and women hold
by themselves.”47
Another logical—if not natural—consequence of the Jesuits’ limited
pastoral capabilities was the potential of these groups for sliding into tem-
poral excesses. After all, the primary impulse among the Chinese Chris-
tians was to form hui, not necessarily Jesuit-patterned sodalities. While
the missionaries may have been able to monitor the brotherhoods that
met in their residence churches, the same degree of supervision was not
possible elsewhere. How, one might ask, could Francesco Brancati regu-
late the fervor of the twenty-two penitential brotherhoods that he claimed
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were part of his Shanghai “diocese” in the early 1650s?48 Only the Jesuits
who tended smaller flocks stood a good chance of supervising devotional
groups. For instance, the priests at Hangzhou discovered a confraternity
outside the city walls in 1656 that paid no more than lip service to prayer.
The greater part of its activities, claimed the missionaries, consisted of “a
feast of the body, eating and drinking.” Obviously, reform was impera-
tive—changes of the type imposed by the Catholic clergy upon European
brotherhoods that went astray. “This laxity was removed,” the Jesuits re-
ported, “and in its place was put a mass and sermon that the priest goes to
offer on meeting days.”49
One of the primary tactics used in the Vice-Province to control the so-
dalities was to pay close attention to their statutes. The missionaries tried
to impress upon their Christians the need to have the rules for their hui
approved. Perhaps, the Jesuits reasoned, if members were apprised of the
statutes and aware that the priests had produced them, then a collective
will to conformity and observance would manifest itself—especially if the
priests aroused another form of “holy envy” by setting limits on the num-
ber of individuals who could join. When Jean Valat was implored by some
Christian men at Tai’an in Shandong Province in 1658 to institute a Mar-
ian sodality, he agreed only on the condition that its membership be lim-
ited to twenty. After selecting these worthies himself, Valat wrote a list of
“rules and customs that they were to observe.”50 Satisfied with this group’s
piety, he issued similar statutes for a women’s group the following year. In
this case, however, the Jesuit was less strict with regard to the prerequi-
sites for membership. His one stipulation was that only those properly
schooled in doctrine so as to be eligible for taking the Eucharist could
join. One hundred and fifteen women became members in the first year
alone.51
The Jesuits’ attempts at reforming some of their devotional groups
while creating others with stronger checks on excess had a salutary effect.
As far as the missionaries were concerned, the mission church’s devotional
elite showed signs of heightened spirituality. Their observance of the
norms of piety laid down in their confraternities’ statutes put them on the
way to reaching the ideal forms of lay religious expression envisioned by
the Society of Jesus. In the opinion of some Jesuits, not a few Chinese
Christians had attained even higher levels of personal zeal than could be
expected of their European counterparts. On the eve of the Canton exile,
Gabriel de Magalhães wrote of how the manners of Peking’s hui members
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Brothers of Passion and Mercy F


were a model for all lay Catholics. He was especially impressed by the way
they assisted at mass with “such decency and composure,” kneeling for the
entire ceremony and standing only during the gospel; unlike European
Christians, they did not “look one way or the other, speak, tell stories, or
act indecently” during the service. Moreover, Magalhães noted, they be-
haved reverently, “not even daring to spit, but when they feel compelled
to do so, they go and do it outside the church.”52
This type of pious example, the Jesuits hoped, would inspire all Chi-
nese Christians. The devotional confraternities were implicitly charged
with sustaining the level of fervor within the mission church at large.
They faced their first (and greatest) challenge while the missionaries were
detained in the late 1660s. The set of rules dispatched by the Jesuits from
Canton for governing their dispersed flocks in effect posted the devotional
groups to the mission church’s vanguard. The Marian sodalities and the
penitential confraternities received special attention; the day they were to
meet at their local church each month was specified. To avoid attracting
notice, these groups were advised against saying “long prayers” during
their meetings. Similarly, men’s and women’s congregations were warned
not to meet on the same day. Those who wished to practice flagellation, to
fast, or to wear a cilice—common activities for the Confraternities of the
Passion—were urged to continue. Nevertheless, the Jesuits forbade their
female followers to “take discipline” in groups. They also stipulated that
penitential practices be avoided by “the old, the poor, the sick, and people
not able to endure them.” Without due pastoral oversight, the missionar-
ies felt that it was better for such individuals to “do other good spiritual
works as compensation.”53
While at Canton the Jesuits reflected on how confraternal piety had
spread throughout the mission church. They found the proliferation of
hui with a host of different saintly patrons and pious practices to be a vex-
ing problem. Over the preceding decades, individual Jesuits had spurred
the formation of brotherhoods without any apparent attempt at unifor-
mity. Problems would necessarily arise when those men were replaced by
others who were unfamiliar with the style of a given confraternity. For ex-
ample, the Jesuits at Fuzhou ministered to a Brotherhood of the Guardian
Angel that had no equivalent elsewhere in China.54 A similar idiosyncrasy
was reported from the Shanghai area in 1661, when the Sicilian-born
Francesco Brancati told a confrere that the fifty-three penitential groups
under his care performed “all of the exercises of the secret congregations of
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Palermo and Naples.”55 Would such practices be readily understood by his
successors from Évora and Mechelen? The standardization of confraternal
piety was the wisest course of action. The Jesuits therefore agreed to trans-
form their confraternities into four standard types: one Marian, another
penitential, a third doctrinal (for children), and the last for catechists. In
each church, one group was to begin “seeking, raising, and baptizing
foundlings.”56
Another question the Jesuits faced was how to ensure that participation
in devotional confraternities was restricted to the most fervent. As we saw
in the previous chapter, the mode of communal piety characteristic of
the organizational Shengmu hui involved ordinary Chinese Christians in
prayer routines and sacramental obligations that were less intense forms of
those practiced by the devotional groups. There was nothing to keep these
men and women from being touched by the same spirit of “pious compe-
tition” that was found among their more fervent brethren. Unless they
were given orders to the contrary, ordinary Christians might mimic the
practices of the restricted sodalities.
In order to draw a clear dividing line between different levels of com-
munal piety, the Jesuits reserved one activity for their confraternities
alone, the privilege of selecting “saints of the month.” This devotion
had originated with Saint Francis Borja (1510–1572), the Society’s third
Superior General, who had experienced it during his childhood in the
Aragonese city of Gandía.57 By the end of the sixteenth century, this prac-
tice had spread throughout the order’s colleges and brotherhoods. During
meetings of Jesuit sodalities, members would draw slips of paper from a
bowl, each bearing the name of a saint whose feast day fell during that
month and a verse of scripture. This saint was to serve as a temporary pa-
tron. According to one set of Annunciada statutes from Portugal, each
brother was to pray to his saint daily, “doing him some special service, ei-
ther as a work of charity toward others or as an act of penance.” Further
devotions were expected on the saint’s feast day.58 According to Philippe
Couplet, the use of “saints of the month” was first used among the Chi-
nese Christians at the direction of Giacomo Rho.59 By the 1660s, this cus-
tom was popular among the mission church’s devout members. Through
their attempt to restrict the “saints of the month” to a fraction of their
flock, the Jesuits aimed to keep the practice from becoming a banal com-
monplace while at the same time making it a reward for those who
showed the piety necessary for joining a devotional confraternity.
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The move toward standardization came to fruition only after the Jesuits
returned to their flocks in the early 1670s. It would appear that the confra-
ternities created then adhered to the plans drawn up during the mission-
aries’ exile. When Couplet arrived in the Shanghai-Songjiang area in 1675,
he set about reconstituting the region’s Marian sodalities and penitential
brotherhoods.60 François de Rougemont, too, made an effort to create
similar groups when he took up residence in Changshu in the early
1670s.61 The rules adopted at Canton gave guidance to missionaries out-
side the Jiangnan area as well. During a visit to Jianchang, Jiangxi Prov-
ince, in 1686, Manuel Mendes approved the creation of a new Marian so-
dality reserved for the city’s female spiritual elite.62
The fact that charitable brotherhoods were not mentioned in the Jesu-
its’ list of approved groups does not mean that the missionaries ceased to
encourage communal charity or that Chinese Christians lost their urge to
form hui dedicated to altruism. The members of their flock were for the
most part poor and lived “by the work of their hands,” wrote the Peking
Jesuits in the early 1670s. Even so, some of those who were “more amply
provisioned in heavenly than in earthly goods” started a confraternity that
obliged them to donate one tael a month toward buying clothes for poor
Christians.63 Recall that the Jesuits decided at Canton to insist that the
other devotional groups perform works of social assistance, such as the
task of gathering foundlings. By the late 1680s, at least one Christian
group had been formed with the purpose of attending to the thousands of
abandoned children who died each year in Chinese cities because of “the
cold, or for lack of milk, or because they are bitten by dogs.” This Peking
brotherhood, whose members were all “well versed in the baptismal for-
mula,” scoured the capital’s streets in search of infants. The lucky few who
showed vital signs were taken to orphanages, while the others were bap-
tized before they expired. As a result of this charitable activity, claimed
one missionary, the Peking church “grew more in heaven than on earth.”64
The Full Flower of Communal Piety
Across the decades from 1609 until the 1690s, the principal trend in the
development of confraternal piety in the mission church was toward the
models of piety fostered by the Society of Jesus in Europe. This gradual
but ultimately incomplete shift saw the proportional reduction of prop-
erly Chinese forms of hui activity (such as banqueting and regular contri-
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butions) in favor of European types of group practices (such as mandated
devotional cycles). From the Jesuits’ perspective, by the end of the seven-
teenth century, some of their Chinese brotherhoods had begun to resem-
ble European pious associations. But the final stage in this evolution oc-
curred only in the areas where the missionaries could offer uninterrupted
attention to the local spiritual elite. In regions where the Jesuits were
obliged to spend most of the year on mission circuits, they could not pro-
vide such supervision. It is therefore not surprising that the push to reach
the Society’s ideal for communal piety occurred in Peking, the same city
where the first devotional group was formed.
In the 1690s the Jesuits ministered to four principal devotional congre-
gations at the capital city. All met at least once a month, and all required
their members to confess and take communion regularly. The spiritual re-
ward for participation in these groups went beyond the obvious rec-
ompense for sacramental assiduity, since the Jesuits had the authority
to award indulgences to diligent confraternity members. The Eastern
Church (Dongtang, or Church of Saint Joseph), which had been shuttered
from the 1660s until the 1690s, was home to a Congregation of Saint Jo-
seph. This group’s distinguishing feature was its distribution of alms to
poor Christian families “in honor of the Glorious saint, the Holy Virgin,
and the Holy Child.” The College of Peking (Xitang, called Nantang after
about 1703) was where the Confraternity of Souls was based. This group
was entrusted with conducting Christian burials with appropriate pomp,
as well as maintaining the banners and processional carts used during fu-
neral cortèges. Its members included a few “dexterous catechists,” whose
function was to engage with passersby who were attracted by these pious
displays. The third brotherhood was devoted to the Passion, and was simi-
lar to the penitential groups found elsewhere in the mission church.
When this group met at the college church, the members would lie pros-
trate before an image of the crucified Christ and chant the Litanies of the
Passion “in alternating voices in a sad song.” After an hour of prayer and
“no lack of tears,” the brothers would subject themselves to “a rigorous
discipline on their backs for the length of a Miserere.”65
The most illustrious devotional group, in the opinion of José Soares,
was the one that he himself had created in 1694, the Congregation of
the Annunciation of Our Lady, Shengmu lingbao hui. This group ini-
tially consisted of forty male members.66 Within three years, however, it
counted seventy-six professed members and fifty-five probationary nov-
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ices. Multiple women’s groups were also formed at the capital with the
same invocation of the Annunciation. According to Soares, their members
represented the “flower of the entire Christian community, of both sexes,
and from both inside and outside the city walls.” The statutes for these
groups consisted of a translation of the common rules of the Roman
Prima Primaria completed by Soares. With minor variations, the Chinese
members were obliged to keep the same sacramental schedules and prayer
routines as their counterparts in Europe. At Peking, their weekly devo-
tions included singing the litanies, collecting alms for the poor, and at-
tending mass. Soares’s praise for their displays of devotion knew few lim-
its; they attended mass with “singular modesty, reverence, and devotion.”
It was possible to say “without exaggeration,” Soares insisted, that their
comportment exceeded that of the “most well-instructed and circumspect
Europeans.”67
Once a month the men’s Annunciada gathered to sing responsorial
prayers and hear a mass for the souls of deceased brothers and their rela-
tives. The assembled congregation also chanted the litanies of the Virgin
and heard a short sermon on an aspect of her life. After these rituals,
members chose a “saint of the month,” said a rosary, and held talks on
spiritual matters. They ended their meetings by reporting to the supervis-
ing priest on affairs pertaining to the confraternity and the Christian
community in general. These meetings lasted two and a half hours, wrote
Soares, and were conducted with an “order and decency” that would in-
cite the envy of European sodalities. On two occasions each year, at the
feasts of the Annunciation and the Assumption, the brotherhood held its
principal ceremonies. (The women’s groups held their “universal congre-
gations,” that is, the general assembly of all of the women’s Annunciadas,
at the same times of the year.) According to Soares, these festivities were a
cause for great joy, “not only at the holy table of Communion but also at
the one used during the solemn banquet that the president and his assis-
tants offer to the whole congregation on those days.” While the Jesuits
permitted banquets at these feasts in acknowledgment of Chinese customs
of conviviality, normal meetings did not include meals. The two celebra-
tions were also the occasions for electing officials and inducting new
members. Novices had to make general confessions to qualify for entry
and accept that those who broke the group’s statutes would be punished
publicly or even expelled.68
The Peking Annunciadas’ members were encouraged to make charita-
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ble contributions, and, according to Soares, they gave freely and gen-
erously. Part of the congregation’s funds was spent on maintaining its
church, part on alms for needy Christians (including the gift of clothes to
the poor, so they could attend mass), and part on “other pious works.”
The female groups made donations toward the construction of a new
women’s church, dedicated to the Annunciation, at the college in 1694.
For Soares, however, the Annunciadas’ most valuable public service came
through the expenditures they made, “part on books of the Holy Law to
distribute to Christians and heathens, part on printing and painting sa-
cred images, part on rosaries and reliquaries.” Such activities seem to have
been unique to the Peking congregations. Their publishing venture sup-
plied many of the images and texts, both Chinese and Manchu, which
were used throughout the mission church. And although, in the mission-
aries’ words, these sacred objects “did not match those of Europe,” they
appear to have been satisfactory as far as the Chinese Christians were con-
cerned.69
If there was one missionary who felt that some Chinese Christians had
reached a level of spiritual engagement equal to that of Europeans, it was
José Soares. He was convinced that the Peking Annunciadas were clear re-
flections of the Marian sodalities he had known in his native Portugal. In
order to gain recognition for this pastoral accomplishment, Soares peti-
tioned the Society’s Superior General to have the groups enrolled on the
register of affiliates of the Roman Archconfraternity of the Annuncia-
tion.70 In addition to attracting renewed attention to the efforts of the
men of the Vice-Province, this gesture also made sure that the members of
the Peking Annunciadas received the same indulgences for their prayers
and pious works that were granted to similar Marian sodalities around the
globe.
To what extent, however, should one trust the claims that Soares—the
spiritual director of the Annunciadas—made about his confraternities?
Did these groups really meet European standards of piety? Some of the
Vice-Province’s most bitter critics certainly thought so. When Jean de
Fontaney wanted to marshal evidence that the “Portuguese” Jesuits were
conspiring against the French mission, he wrote to the Society’s executive
secretary for the French provinces with extracts from the rules of Soares’s
Marian sodalities. Instead of dismissing the groups out of hand as some
hybrid form of confraternal piety, Fontaney compared them to “our con-
gregations in Europe.” His complaint did not concern any of the groups’
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devotional aspects or sacramental requirements. Rather, focusing on the
men’s Annunciada, he insisted that its statutes accorded excessive power to
its prefect and that the group’s main aim was to collect money. Fontaney
viewed the prefect’s capacity to dismiss members and impose punishments
as coercive tactics designed to keep the Peking Christians from seeking
pastoral care from the French. His complaint against obligatory dona-
tions, offerings made upon joining the group and as fulfillment of ex
voto promises, stood on less solid ground. “In Europe,” Fontaney wrote,
“members donate for the expenses of the congregation, but they have not
yet made it into a rule.”71
In general, the devotional confraternities of the mission church did not
reach the European standards of lay piety held by the Society of Jesus.
While the Annunciada model was replicated at Fuzhou “in imitation of
the court” by Fujian Christians as early as 1695, most of the Jesuits’
brotherhoods were structured like the ones created in the 1660s.72 That
was the moment when the broad lines of communal devotions were set.
Devotional congregations fell into three principal categories: Marian so-
dalities, charitable confraternities, and penitential brotherhoods. These
three modes of group religiosity had the same basic goal, namely, to chan-
nel the fervor of Chinese Christians. All of them stressed pastoral over-
sight, collective moral supervision, charitable works, reception of the sac-
raments, and regular prayer routines. A look at a set of statutes from each
type of confraternity will reveal how they functioned.
Awaiting the Blessings of the Virgin
The most common type of devotional confraternity was the Marian so-
dality, typically called Shengmu hui. A pious dedication to Mary was in
keeping with the common devotions to the Virgin fostered by the Society
in Europe and elsewhere. This general predilection explains why the Vice-
Province’s organizational units were also labeled Shengmu hui, although
the differences between those groups and the devotional confraternities of
the same name were clear. For one, the devotional sodalities were most of-
ten found in urban milieux where they could receive pastoral oversight
and access to the sacraments from resident missionaries. Moreover, they
included a range of devotional activities that went beyond the spiritual
obligations demanded of ordinary Chinese Christians. It is nevertheless
the case that many devotional Shengmu hui bore close resemblances to
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their organizational counterparts and that the available sources do not
make the dividing line between the two categories perfectly clear.
In the 1630s, reports from across the Vice-Province began to mention
the creation of devotional Shengmu hui. For instance, in 1637 Gaspar
Ferreira reported adding an altar at the residence church in Jianchang,
Jiangxi Province, where a Marian sodality gathered to attend mass on
meeting days. This group also stayed to receive the Eucharist and listen to
one of their number give a “spiritual lesson for a quarter of an hour.”73
António de Gouvea claimed in 1645 that the members of the Shengmu hui
in Fuzhou were a clear example of piety. They far outdid their core-
ligionists in “frequenting the Holy Sacraments of Confession and Comm-
union, in attending mass, and in fasts.”74 The Jesuits likewise claimed that
the Marian sodality at Yanping in Fujian Province was responsible for
making the local Christians “much more fervent and zealous for the con-
version of their relatives, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances.” This
group’s members would meet in the house of one of their number to
“spend a good part of the day making their devotions to the sound of
flutes.” This music attracted onlookers, who left with “more than an
awareness of the Law of God,” claimed the missionaries, since they were
“edified by the fervor and devotions of the Christians.”75
In order to structure these expressions of communal piety, the Jesuits
and their Christians produced hui statutes. When their rules were written
out, or, in some cases, printed, the groups took on an air of formality.
This was the case of the Marian sodality created by Jean Valat at Tai’an,
Shandong Province, in 1658. The formal gesture of selecting the twenty
most “capable, expert, and exemplary” Christians and issuing a set of writ-
ten statutes no doubt contributed to the group’s sense of cohesion.76
Humbert Augery drew up rules for a similar sodality, most likely the
group that gathered in Martino Martini’s Hangzhou church. Although it
is unclear when this text was written, it seems likely that it was produced
in either the early 1660s or the early 1670s. Augery’s text is a printed book-
let intended to be given to new members upon joining the Shengmu hui.
It consists of a preamble followed by seventeen points touching on proce-
dural matters as well as the order of prayers at meetings and on feast
days.77
To set the tone for the group’s activities, Augery began with a brief dis-
cussion of the benefits of devotion to the Virgin. He noted that although
Christians were to focus on the Lord of Heaven, their numerous sins
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made them “strong in body but weak in spirit.” Even those who appealed
to Tianzhu “with all their might” did not always have their prayers an-
swered. They needed a heavenly intercessor, and there was none better
than Mary, “whose virtue surpasses that of all the other saints.” Augery
cited Saint Augustine to contrast the figure of Eve with that of the Virgin.
“One inflicts pain,” he remarked in reference to original sin, “and the
other cures.” By praying to Mary, the Jesuit contended, one could expect
“peace and happiness during one’s lifetime and eternal blessings after
death.” Those who joined the Shengmu hui clearly merited the Virgin’s
special blessing. And the Lord of Heaven, Augery added, would not aban-
don anyone who was devoted to the Holy Mother.78
Augery also described how he came to devise the statutes for this
sodality. He noted that upon his arrival in Wulin (another name for
Hangzhou), some Christians inquired about the “right way to pay hom-
age to the Holy Mother, with the intention to do it in the manner of her
devotees in the West.” Acceding to their wishes, Augery translated and
adapted the statutes for a European sodality, most likely the rules of the
Prima Primaria. He then gave this text to the Chinese aspirants “so that
they could practice and abide by the rules.” Augery made it clear that
those in the West who observed the rules of their sodalities received “spe-
cial favor from the Holy Mother.” What he was referring to were the in-
dulgences granted to members of sodalities that were officially recognized
by the papacy. In Europe, Augery explained, when hui members displayed
“diligence and prudence” that pleased the Holy Mother, the priest in
charge of their group would ask for a plenary indulgence from the pope.
The Holy See usually granted such requests, and he would surely do the
same for the members of this Shengmu hui if they followed Augery’s ex-
hortation to “do your best.”79
The prescription for the Hangzhou brotherhood reveals that it was in-
spired by European models of confraternal piety. The first and second
statutes place primary importance on treating all members as equals.
Augery exhorted them to “love one another unswervingly” and never dis-
criminate. Moreover, they were to elect a prefect by secret ballot on the
basis of “virtue and not age.” The only deference that members were to
show was to their priest, requesting his judgment on any matters relating
to Christian teachings, as well as seeking his approval for group activities.
The elected prefect was, however, accorded a central role within the
brotherhood. He was charged with supervising the moral conduct of the
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group, exhorting members to remain strong in faith, and comforting
those who fell ill. The prefect was also enjoined to advise those members
who were “successful in life” to give to charity. He was responsible for re-
questing masses when members died and for organizing prayers for the
sick, the dying, and the dead. Along with these duties came the power to
chastise or dismiss those who repeatedly disobeyed his orders. This last
feature diverged from European patterns of confraternity governance but,
in light of the small number of missionaries, made the hui less dependent
on clerical oversight.80
The membership of the Shengmu hui was to be drawn from the ranks
of the especially devout. In order to join, petitioners had to submit to a
probationary period, during which the group’s members would examine
the postulant’s conduct, inform him of the rules, and report his name to
the priest for approval. Those admitted were to say a special prayer in
which the novice implored Christ and Mary for their blessings and in par-
ticular for their guidance toward proper moral conduct, “whether in ac-
tion or in repose.” This prayer was a spiritual counterpart to Augery’s en-
couragement that members mind one another’s business, especially when
they disobeyed the statutes or Christian precepts. Further, the brothers
were charged with caring for their families’ moral and spiritual welfare,
being told to “mind their moral conduct as you take care of their food and
clothing.” The charge to survey morals did not stop, however, at the
members’ doorsteps. They were also instructed to encourage non-Chris-
tians to submit to baptism and exhort lax adherents of Tianzhu jiao to “re-
pent and reform.”81
The practices mandated for this sodality were much more rigorous than
those prescribed for organizational groups. Since the devotional hui was
predicated on the idea of regular contact between its members and their
priest, Augery could raise his standards. All in the Shengmu hui were to
make a daily examination of conscience, pray the Salve Regina three
times, and recite the Paternoster and the Ave Maria five times each day.
They were required to fast one day every month in remembrance of their
parents and benefactors. Members were to confess once a month and
make a general confession on the Feast of the Assumption (August 15).
The sodality observed four Marian feasts: Purification (February 2), An-
nunciation (March 26), Assumption, and Nativity (September 8). Its
members were to receive the Eucharist on all of these occasions as well as
at Easter and Christmas, three times more often than ordinary Chinese
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Brothers of Passion and Mercy F


Christians. When the feasts fell on Saturdays, the hui was instructed to
meet for special devotions, chanting prayers to the Virgin before the dis-
played host while holding candles.82
The Hangzhou brotherhood was to hold its meetings on the first Satur-
day of every month at church. First, the members would attend mass in
order “to pray to the Holy Mother to request the Lord’s blessing upon the
brethren.” The priest was to remain present for the duration of the gather-
ing, answer questions about doctrine, and hear the members give ac-
counts of their behavior. They were urged to avoid “concealment or par-
tiality” during these moments of self-denunciation. At each stage of their
meetings, the members would recite prayers such as the Litanies of the
Saints, the rosary, and the Credo. Other prayers found in the common
prayer manual, Nianjing zongdu, were said for “all people,” the pope, “the
spread of Catholic teachings,” and relatives living and deceased. Not sur-
prisingly, orations for “peace and harmony among Christian princes” said
by Marian sodalities in Europe were replaced with prayers for the Qing
emperor and the Chinese government. The selection of “saints of the
month” was the concluding activity. Members were to take turns reading
the name of their temporary patron as well as the scripture verse on their
slip of paper, offering exegesis extempore for those who did not under-
stand the meaning of the biblical passage.83
The Workings of Mercy
Perhaps no part of the Jesuits’ religious message was so warmly received in
China as the call for corporal works of mercy. This part of Christian
teaching enjoyed such resonance because it harmonized well with indige-
nous patterns of social action inspired by the Confucian notion Ren, be-
nevolence. Understandably, some of the first Christian hui were created by
literati converts seeking to channel their faith through familiar conduits.
António de Gouvea related how Yang Tingyun founded a literati group at
Hangzhou in the 1610s. This brotherhood was modeled on examples
found in the “ancient books” of the Confucian canon, he wrote, and
called a “gin hoei [Renhui], which means Monte de Piedade.” Gouvea
here used the Portuguese term for the community chest, a phrase more of-
ten linked to the medieval Italian institutions called Monti di Pietà. This
group had two aims: to convert those who joined it and to provide alms to
poor Christians. Gouvea claimed that Yang’s friends joined his brother-
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hood, making contributions that went to succor the poor “in their ill-
nesses, as well as at the hour of death and burial.”84
The alacrity with which Chinese Christians created charitable brother-
hoods presented the Jesuits with ideal conditions for coaxing this indige-
nous model of confraternal social action into more devotional molds. The
missionaries accomplished this task by insisting that the brothers say
prayers at their meetings and obliging them to receive the sacraments.
They also placed emphasis on certain forms of Christian charity that in-
volved more spiritual than material gestures, such as conducting funeral
processions and praying for the souls of the dead. This is where the Peking
Jesuits attempted to steer their Confraternity of Piety during the early
1630s. In addition to assisting at burials, the group would hear mass when
it held meetings and afterwards proceed to the “two common graveyards
of the Christians to pray their rosaries for the dead.”85 A generation later,
Gabriel de Magalhães described a similar group called “Kim mo, Respect
and Remembrance for the Last Things.” According to him, this group’s
actions were equivalent to the corporal works of mercy. The group at-
tended to “the needy poor, orphans, and widows” and sent members to
console the sick. Its most important activity, however, was to help bury
the dead. For this activity, the group kept carriages for transporting coffins
and had a store of banners and candles.86
The Roman Archives of the Society of Jesus preserve a manuscript con-
taining a set of statutes for a Renhui. Although the group described in the
text has the same name as the myriad benevolent associations of the late
Ming and early Qing periods, it bears little resemblance to the charitable
groups founded by contemporary literati or even Christian converts. As
Erik Zürcher has shown in his analysis of Wang Zheng’s Renhui, such
groups could be no more than reflections of their Confucian parallels,
barely suggesting that Tianzhu jiao was their inspiration.87 Moreover, nei-
ther Wang’s group nor Yang Tingyun’s hui excluded non-Christians from
its activities. By contrast, the manuscript statutes are explicitly Christian,
with repeated references to central doctrines, the Virgin, and devotional
obligations matching their demands for social action—making it clear
that membership was restricted to Christians.88
Before listing nineteen organizational points, the statutes contain a pre-
amble reminding participants that the Teachings of the Lord of Heaven
can be boiled down to two main points: love of God and love of neighbor.
In the elaboration on the first precept, members were exhorted to “listen
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Brothers of Passion and Mercy F


attentively to the explanations” of Christian doctrine and avoid the “he-
retical teachings” of other religions. In the explanation of the second
theme, they were encouraged to perform works of mercy, not just because
they pertain to “universal virtue” but because the group’s heavenly patron
was “none other than the Holy Mother.” The Renhui was to imitate her
boundless mercy by taking action “wholeheartedly, and not just with spo-
ken words.”89 The tone of this discussion suggests that this brotherhood
was designed for Christians who showed less inclination to devotional
rigor than their peers in the Marian sodalities. Whereas those who joined
the Shengmu hui were offered theological reflections on the intercessory
nature of the Virgin, postulants for the Renhui were reminded of basic
Christian teachings. Without any overemphasis on the differences in their
intended audiences, it is worth noting that the Renhui statutes include ex-
planations of how to perform certain devotions, such as group prayers and
examinations of conscience, presumably so familiar to members of the
Marian sodality that there was no need to expatiate on them in the rules.
The fundamental aim of the charitable brotherhood was to apportion
alms and prayers to the Christian community. Accordingly, the initial
statutes outline how the group was to manage its financial resources. All
donations, the first rule indicated, were to be disbursed according to the
common consent of the hui, regardless of the amount contributed by each
brother. In order to ensure probity, the group was to have four elected of-
ficials: one president, two vice presidents, and a treasurer. As a further se-
curity measure, the collection box was to be kept in the church and shut
with three locks. Each of the three presiding members was to have a key,
while the treasurer was to keep the account book with “all debits and cred-
its recorded clearly by date.” For all of this attention to the collection of
funds, it is curious that there are no suggestions as to the types of charita-
ble work that the group was to perform. In fact, the statutes imply that
the group would develop its own preferred forms of public piety over
time. Nevertheless, they do note that the “first priority will be given to the
Funeral Liturgy,” that is, the group’s participation in burials. Since funeral
processions were among the most visible acts of Christian devotion in
China, members were reminded to do everything “in accord with the rites
of the Holy Teaching.” Moreover, they were to pay special attention to the
way they sang the prayers, whether in responsorial or in unison. “There
should be no confusion,” read the statutes, “nor should vulgar words be
used.”90
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The outward expression of virtue was not limited to the moments
when the Renhui acted as a group. Individual members were charged with
being models of piety for the rest of their community. As was the case
with the Marian sodality, they were urged to start their work of charity at
home “and then extend it to others.” This charge entailed supervising the
moral conduct of those in their households and caring for the physical
and spiritual welfare of their parents, wives, and children. Outside the
home, brothers were instructed to have Tianzhu always on their minds
and warned “never to forget the Lord of Heaven in their speech.”91
Whether or not those who joined this brotherhood saw themselves
among the spiritual elite of their communities, they were obliged to en-
gage in devotional routines that were more intense than those prescribed
for ordinary Christians. Upon joining, all members were to confess. After-
wards, they were to receive the sacrament of penance once a month. Al-
though the statutes had no provisions for how to conduct meetings, par-
ticipants were to report to the church on the first Sunday of the month to
select a “saint of the month.” On their patron’s feast day, they were to at-
tend mass. Members were also required to pray part of the rosary and sing
a Litany of the Virgin in the morning and the evening, as well as another
three Paternosters and Ave Marias each day in honor of their “saint of the
month.” All of these prayers, of course, were in addition to the numerous
orations made at the bedsides of sick brothers or the gravesides of de-
ceased Christians. As a further prod toward rectitude, members were re-
quired to reflect on their “thoughts, words, and deeds” before retiring each
night. This introspection was nothing short of an examination of con-
science, one of the Society’s preferred meditative techniques. When, on
reflection, one’s actions appeared to be good, Renhui members were told,
they were to give thanks to Tianzhu. When they did not, however, the
brothers were to “pray for pardon.”92
Passionate Discipline
In contrast to the charitable brotherhoods which rested firmly on indige-
nous moral foundations, the mission church’s penitential groups clearly
revealed their European origins. In spite of the widely held (though false
and repeatedly denied) notion that the China Jesuits wasted little breath
on the doctrine of the Incarnation, the missionaries were so insistent on
teaching their followers about Christ’s Passion that they managed to dis-
395
Brothers of Passion and Mercy F


place deeply rooted traditions against self-mortification. As Erik Zürcher
has shown, the idea that the inclinations of the soul might be in conflict
with the desires of the body was at odds with Chinese thought. In some of
their publications, however, the Jesuits made a radical extrapolation from
the benign Confucian exhortation to moral self-cultivation. They under-
stood the notion of “subduing” the body as a call to corporal mortificat-
ion—an exaggeration exposed by their critics as well as their admirers.93
On another level, the common understanding of filial piety in Chinese
culture considered hurting or mutilating one’s body an insult to progeni-
tors. The Jesuits themselves were surprised that their followers so willingly
acted on their suggestions to practice fasting and discipline. Their peni-
tential zeal was “something to give thanks to God for,” wrote Feliciano
Pacheco, “since although the Chinese are such friends of their bodies, they
resolve to punish them so bitterly and severely.”94 Philippe Couplet, for
one, chanced an explanation. He claimed that the novelty of the doctrine
of the Passion in China was responsible for making “a greater impression
on the hearts of these new Christians.”95
Whatever the reason for the reception of Christian notions of self-
mortification, the fact is that in the 1630s the Jesuits began to encourage
the creation of penitential groups throughout the mission church. Like
other devotional confraternities, these groups were founded primarily in
urban settings where their members could benefit from the continual su-
pervision of spiritual directors. They met to meditate on the Passion at
the missionaries’ residence churches on Fridays, often at night and in se-
cluded chapels in order to avoid raising suspicions. One report about
Shanghai in the early 1640s told how penitents displayed their fervor “all
year long” through prayers, meditations, and flagellation. Their piety cli-
maxed during Lent, when they would meet every Friday “in the morning
and afternoon to practice self-discipline and pray.”96 A similar group met
in the mid-1650s under the guidance of Étienne Faber and Inácio da
Costa at Xi’an, gathering on Saturday nights to pray, listen to saintly
exempla, and lash themselves. The missionaries claimed that the custom
of fasting prior to these bouts of flagellation was well established, as was
attendance at mass. Some of the group’s married men refrained from sex
on meeting days, a display of zeal that, while not required by Catholic
convention, was duly lauded by the Jesuits as a “holy custom.”97
The missionaries wrote extensively about their followers’ self-
mortification rituals because they were visible proof of the tenor of fervor
396
E building the church


among the mission church’s spiritual elite. Yet the dividing line between
extreme empathy for Christ’s suffering and the will to practice flagellation
was a substantial one, and the Jesuits knew that even their most fervent
followers needed coaxing over that frontier. Therefore, they encouraged
intense routines of prayer and meditation, performed both individually
and as a group. The best way to understand how the missionaries guided
their followers to that critical threshold is to examine the statutes for a
penitential brotherhood, such as the set of rules prepared by Humbert
Augery for Hangzhou Christians joining the Tianzhu Yesu kuhui, Confra-
ternity of the Passion of Lord Jesus. This printed booklet most likely dates
from either the early 1660s (prior to 1664) or the early 1670s and consists
of a brief preamble followed by ten rules for structuring group activities.98
The primary intention of Augery’s kuhui was to foster its members’
internal spirituality. His preamble invokes the biblical account of the
Transfiguration as a divine injunction to imitate the example of Christ.
Although he does not state it explicitly, members were to obey this “com-
mand of Tianzhu” literally. Their activities were reenactments of the hu-
man suffering of Christ’s Passion, complete with mortifying scourges.
Augery encouraged the confraternity to meditate on four themes; in addi-
tion to the precepts of love of God and love of neighbor, he added the
need to be “humble and yielding” as well as to tolerate the faults of others.
Curiously, Augery included no other theological cogitations in his pream-
ble. In contrast to the lengthy discussion found in his Shengmu hui stat-
utes, he ended with a brief order for the group to pray to the Virgin to in-
tercede on behalf of deceased Christians.99
The regulations for this confraternity are markedly different from those
of the Jesuits’ other devotional groups. They place far more emphasis on
individual piety than on group organization or cohesion. There is no indi-
cation of how the confraternity was to select a president or any mecha-
nisms for regulating membership. The only prerequisite for joining the
group was a general confession, that is, an accounting of all sins since bap-
tism with the goal of identifying recurring faults. Likewise, the statutes
make but one reference to a form of group discipline. Latecomers at meet-
ings were to kneel in prayer “holding a bunch of incense” before the sa-
cred image.100 This lack of provisions regarding organization and disci-
pline underscores the purely devotional nature of the group, since the
Jesuits worked under the assumption that penitential activities were indi-
vidual manifestations of piety. No statutes barred the devout from enter-
397
Brothers of Passion and Mercy F


ing the group at will, and perhaps more important, none prevented mem-
bers from leaving it. Nevertheless, the same spirit of “pious competition”
fostered by the Jesuits in their other sodalities undoubtedly bound the
penitential groups together and impelled them to greater degrees of devo-
tional rigor.
As should be expected for a group that emphasized individual piety,
Augery’s group had the most demanding spiritual requirements of all the
Jesuits’ brotherhoods. Members were to confess and take communion ev-
ery month—an obligation that meant receiving the Eucharist six times
more frequently than ordinary Christians and twice as often as members
of the devotional Shengmu hui. Each day, members of the penitential
group were to recite a prayer of “the Five Wounds.” They were also to
pray a coroa (Portuguese for “crown”) of Paternosters, that is, a rosary with
thirty-three beads commemorating the number of barbs in the crown of
thorns as well as the years in Christ’s life. Moreover, members were in-
structed to meditate on the Passion when they woke up each day and to
“resolve not to violate any of the Ten Commandments.”101
The statutes are intentionally vague about the group’s meetings and
penitential activities. Whereas the rules for the other sodalities prescribe a
sequence of prayers at gatherings, this group was simply instructed to “go
to the church and pray in the morning” of the third Friday of each
month. Every Friday, however, held special significance for members,
since on that day they were to “perform one penitential act at will” in
honor of Christ’s suffering.102 This is the statutes’ only reference to self-
mortification; there are no references to flagellation, fasting, or wearing
the cilice. While this seems a paradoxical omission, it was in keeping with
the Jesuits’ ideas on the nature of penitential piety. For displays of fervor
to be genuine, they could not be prescribed—especially since by making
rules about penitential devotions, one might imply that there were certain
preferential ways of manifesting piety. With regard to self-mortification,
the missionaries left the method and the duration up to their Christians.
In this respect, the China Jesuits borrowed a refrain from the statutes of
the Society’s European sodalities, where brothers were to perform peniten-
tial acts “each according to his devotion.”103
Despite their central focus on internal piety, Augery’s statutes were also
concerned with channeling members’ piety toward other Christians. In
keeping with their general ambition to imitate Christ, their first duty was
to act as peacemakers. Augery urged them to “conscientiously exhort”
398
E building the church


quarreling adherents of Tianzhu jiao to abandon their feuds. Members
were also to succor the anxious and the infirm, encouraging their brethren
to confess. It is possible to interpret this injunction to visit the sick as en-
couragement to persuade non-Christians to submit to baptism in times of
mortal crisis. Members were reminded that they would earn “more merit”
if they were the ones who reported potential converts and sick Christians
to the priest.104
The Transmission of Piety
The three forms of confraternal piety sketched in this chapter represent
the advanced stage of the development of the mission church. These
groups constituted the engine of fervor that provided much of the dyna-
mism for the spread of Tianzhu jiao in the seventeenth century and sup-
plied the energy for its preservation, albeit among smaller numbers of
Christians, after 1724. What made these groups such an important part of
the mission church? First of all, they created effective outlets for the prac-
tice of piety, whether it was expressed in an external or an internal man-
ner. Harnessing the indigenous impulse to create hui, the Jesuits fostered
forms of group activity that contributed to maintaining the neophyte’s
zeal long past the moment of baptism. Moreover, the confraternal model
worked to sustain the fervor of individuals who had been born—not con-
verted—into their faith. On another level, the devotional confraternities
created a new series of social distinctions within the mission church. To
qualify for membership in a brotherhood was, in one sense, to rise above
other Christians—a crucial morale boost in view of the fact that the ma-
jority of the Jesuits’ followers were from the lowest ranks of society. Of
course, the missionaries would not have admitted to creating such distinc-
tions merely with the aim of social mobility in the Christian community.
For them, the display of confraternal piety was an ideal for laymen and
women to express the depth of their commitment to the Teachings of the
Lord of Heaven. So much the better if the side effect of such manifesta-
tions of devotion was that others got infected with similar desires.
Another reason why the devotional brotherhoods were important was
that they were, in the short term, a way to make up for the lack of mis-
sionaries. To be sure, all these forms of group piety demanded the pres-
ence of priests for saying masses, hearing confessions, and distributing the
Eucharist. But instead of having to provide individual guidance to the
399
Brothers of Passion and Mercy F


[To view this image, refer to  
the print version of this title.] 
 
 
 


spiritual elite of the mission church, the Jesuits could entrust their confra-
ternities with setting the general direction for the development of Catho-
lic piety. And since the groups met on scheduled days, the priests could
better calibrate their pastoral routines. While the Grim Reaper, of course,
still visited the Chinese Christians at unpredictable hours, they could rest
assured that members of various confraternities were keeping watch, ready
to offer prayers and conduct burials if the Jesuits were off on a mission cir-
cuit or otherwise detained. To the men of the Society of Jesus, however,
the devotional confraternities of their Chinese church represented some-
thing else. These groups were the most mature, tangible fruit of their la-
bors in the “vineyard of the Lord.” The Jesuits had come to China with
the intent of converting its people to Catholic Christianity. They did
not, however, set the end of the process of conversion at the baptis-
mal font. Rather, they conceived of a period of evangelization and spiri-
tual development in which baptism was a crucial early moment. The end
point—if there was such a thing before one beheld Tianzhu in the court
of heaven—came in the understanding and practice of orthodox forms
of lay piety. This was, to be sure, the same benchmark that was set for
lay Catholics in Europe. When the Peking and Fuzhou Jesuits created
Annunciadas at the end of the seventeenth century, they saw their goal be-
coming a reality. They had taken the raw materials of Chinese social
and religious behavior and had molded them into an approximation of
their European ideal—just as Martino Martini had done by building his
church at Hangzhou. Through the soft pressure of pastoral care, the Jesu-
its had stood the standard model of cultural transmission into China on
its head. Before the Yongzheng reign and under ideal conditions, Catholi-
cism in the Qing empire was manifested in increasingly European—and
Jesuit—forms. It was the odor of piety emanating from their mission
church that galvanized the men of the Vice-Province to fight unceas-
ingly in the eighteenth century against their enemies, both Roman and
Manchu.
401
Brothers of Passion and Mercy F
Woodcut print of the Coronation of the Virgin, in Giulio Aleni, Illustrated Explana-
tion of the Incarnation of the Lord of Heaven (Tianzhu jiangsheng chuxiang jingjie),
1637. Note the presence of both Chinese and European figures in the lower half of
the picture.




Conclusion
In the summer heat of 1670, Manuel de Saldanha, the am-
bassador extraordinary of the king of Portugal and viceroy of the Estado
da Índia, journeyed across China to Peking on a mission to seek a renewal
of trade between the city of Macau and the Qing empire. After being
forced to cool his heels in Canton for two years and then traveling up
China’s waterways for six months, Saldanha was received by the Kangxi
emperor. In the ambassador’s suite was Francisco Pimentel (1629–1675), a
Portuguese Jesuit belonging to the Society’s Province of Japan, who was
traveling under the guise of a layman while serving as Saldanha’s confes-
sor. Pimentel was a keen observer who freely recorded his thoughts on
China, reporting on the embassy’s interactions with Manchus and manda-
rins as well as describing its relations with the missionaries at Peking.1
This was one Jesuit who was unimpressed by what he saw, and he was
not shy about sharing his opinions with the old China hands Ferdinand
Verbiest, Gabriel de Magalhães, and Lodovico Buglio. The Qing capital,
Pimentel informed them, lagged far behind its counterparts in Europe,
such as Rome, Paris, and Lisbon. In stark contrast to the impression of
grandeur created by the accounts of Jesuit authors, he complained, the re-
ality of China left much to be desired. In his opinion, a visitor to Peking
would be justified in thinking that he had been transported to “any of the
poorest villages in Portugal.” The city’s buildings, just like those he had
seen elsewhere in the empire, were made of poor materials and had op-
pressively low rooflines. The palaces of the rich were no exception; in any


event, they had no outstanding features save a few pretty courtyards and
painted chambers. What thoroughly fixed Pimentel’s opinion was that
even the wealthy lacked comfort, their homes being insulated from Pe-
king’s severe climate only by rice paper.2
“The priests were unhappy that I had such a low impression of Chinese
buildings,” he wrote. “To sway me they said that I had not seen every-
thing, that I had not been to the house of mandarin so-and-so in such-
and-such a city, an edifice on a par with those in any other part of the
world.” Yet Pimentel remained skeptical. He informed his confreres that
he was certain what they said was true, but they could not change his
opinion. Sniffing at their effusive paeans to China’s marvels, Pimentel
wondered why, of all the cities in their dominions, its emperors had cho-
sen to hold court at Peking, “the worst one of them all.”3
Pimentel resented the Peking Jesuits’ dismissal of his observations. “They
owe me some credit on this subject,” he contended, “because I traveled
through five provinces during the two and a half years it took me to get
from Canton to the court.” One thing Pimentel encountered, however,
was not at odds with his confreres’ descriptions of China. As he put it, he
was constantly “chased by the Christians” during his travels.4 When those
who lived along his route learned that a priest was passing through on his
way to Peking, many of them rushed to intercept Pimentel so they could
confess their sins to him. In short, he found tangible evidence of a large
and widely disseminated mission church. Or, put another way, from the
point of view of a missionary, China was not such a miserable edifice af-
ter all.
Recall that Pimentel’s progress across the Qing empire occurred at a
time when most of the Jesuits were confined in Canton and only the Do-
minican Luo Wenzao was able to circulate freely about the country. Yet he
was unprepared to minister to the Chinese Christians. “They were utterly
disconsolate,” he wrote, “when they found out that I did not speak their
language.” So great was the press of penitents that Pimentel commis-
sioned a special confessional manual from a native Christian literatus
whom the Canton Jesuits had attached to the embassy. This handbook
consisted of a list of sins in Portuguese and Chinese, accompanied by an-
other list of the numbers one to five. Christians could thus confess in si-
lence, “pointing to the species of sin and then finding the character which
indicated the number of times.” Both men and women sought out the
priest, and those who could not read confessed with the help of his inter-
404
E Conclusion


preter. Knowing that Pimentel could not speak Mandarin, the captive
missionaries had not given him a list beforehand of their Christian com-
munities. Despite that, word of his imminent arrival traveled quickly
enough. And when the speed of the embassy’s barges outpaced the cur-
rents of rumor, local Christians were alerted to his presence by the adher-
ents of Tianzhu jiao in his company or simply by the flags on the ships
that bore the red crosses of Portugal’s Order of Christ.5
Pimentel put considerable stock in his observations. He knew about
Chinese architecture because, as a member of the ambassadorial train, he
had been lodged in several mandarin palaces along his route. The condi-
tions he had endured at Peking were, from his point of view, far from be-
ing the image of Oriental splendor that his mind’s eye beheld after he read
the accounts of Nicolas Trigault, Álvaro Semedo, and Martino Martini.
But he had met throngs of Christians and observed their desire for the
sacraments, an experience that stirred his soul. He wrote of being over-
joyed by how his servant, a young man from the island of Timor who had
been raised in Macau, challenged the religious beliefs of the local boatmen
who steered them across the Yangzi. He gladly performed more than two
hundred baptisms of adults and children at the insistence of Christian
men and women. And although he could not speak to them in their na-
tive tongue, Pimentel was certain of the piety of Agueda Tong and her
husband, Tong Guoqi, the high-ranking mandarin who housed the priest
during his visit to Nanjing. Although Tong had not yet submitted to bap-
tism in 1670, he had long been an ally of the missionaries thanks to his
Christian wife. Even if Pimentel refused to believe a word of what the
China Jesuits told him about Tong’s pious inclinations, he had prima facie
evidence of them in the church at Ganzhou that the mandarin had paid to
build. And while staying in Tong’s palace, where he said daily masses in a
small chapel, Pimentel saw before him the fruit of the Qing official’s will-
ingness to convert all members of his household to the Teachings of the
Lord of Heaven.
Predilection for cultural contrasts and disregard (surely not ignorance)
of the widely invoked early modern adage “comparisons are odious” lay at
the heart of Francisco Pimentel’s doubts. Over the months he had spent
traveling by ship from Lisbon to Macau, his mind had conjured up im-
ages of China derived from his confreres’ writings in order to dissolve the
oppressive weight of the horizon line at sea. When he finally beheld the
fraction of the Qing empire that he could glimpse from the ambassadorial
405
Conclusion F


barges, his fancies jarred against the reality before him—yet only partially.
When Pimentel used a European scale of cultural and artistic grandeur to
gauge the level of Chinese magnificence, he failed to register indigenous
achievements. But when he turned his gaze to things more proper to his
own cultural frame—that is, when he looked for the fruits of missionary
work that he himself had been trained to cultivate as a religious profes-
sional—he saw clearly the accomplishments of his colleagues. Pimentel
would take that awareness with him to Tonkin, where his destiny lay, us-
ing it to compare the results of his own apostolic labors in that mission
field with those he had witnessed in China.
Pimentel was surprised by what he found in China in 1670. It is only
natural for historians, looking back from a distance of three centuries, to
raise questions about the similarities and differences between the Jesuits’
efforts in China and their enterprises elsewhere in the early modern
world. After all, the Society of Jesus conducted missionary projects simul-
taneously in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, staffing them all with
men drawn from the same pool of recruits as those who were assigned to
the Vice-Province. In the preceding chapters I have shown how the China
Jesuits relied on evangelizing techniques and pastoral strategies that their
confreres employed among European Catholics. It is therefore unsurpris-
ing that the Society’s men in other overseas mission fields would rely on
similar methods. Bearing in mind the obvious differences in the condi-
tions for missionary work between areas as disparate as the Amazonian
rainforest, the North American woodlands, the South India coast, and the
Chinese empire, one can identify a series of characteristics that unified Je-
suit efforts around the globe. Such commonalities include the problem
of learning indigenous languages, the confrontation with other religious
traditions, the strategies employed for indoctrination and creating new
Christian identities, and the modes of organization used to structure neo-
phyte communities. While the pursuit of detailed comparisons between
the China mission and the Society’s other missions lies beyond the scope
of this study, in the following pages I sketch some general similarities be-
tween them.
Unity amid Diversity
Before embarking on a journey, however brief, around the Jesuit world,
one needs to suggest some parameters for this exercise in comparison.
406
E Conclusion


First of all, one must recognize the Society of Jesus itself as the constant
element among the variables found in different missionary environments.
Without ignoring the variations between the order’s provinces in Europe
(which served as the primary recruiting ground for its missionaries), one
discerns a formidable sense of corporate unity rooted in the Jesuits’ shared
training experiences, organizational structure, and pastoral ministries. Yet
that bond of internal cohesion was itself the product of a process of evolu-
tion that took place over the decades following the order’s establishment
in 1540. It is therefore possible to speak of a pan-European Jesuit identity
only after the order had articulated common patterns of activity and ad-
ministration, a development roughly dating to the late 1570s and early
1580s. Before then, the character of the order had been dominated by the
charisma of its founding generation (Ignatius Loyola, Peter Canisius,
Simão Rodrigues)—a phenomenon replicated in the overseas missions
(Francis Xavier, Matteo Ricci, Manuel da Nóbrega). The most promising
terms for comparing missionary enterprises can thus be found chronologi-
cally after the first generations of Jesuits had forged their order’s identity
and the pioneers of each mission reached their first conclusions about
how best to conduct their apostolic endeavors. While the vicissitudes
of the early missions to India, Brazil, Japan, Syria, Ethiopia, Morocco,
Kongo, and the Indonesian archipelago certainly contributed to the devel-
opment of Jesuit strategies and attitudes, they reflect the flux of the Soci-
ety of Jesus itself in its first decades. Further contrasts can be detected be-
tween the policies of mission founders and those of their successors. In the
case of the China mission, the administrative and evangelical strategies
elaborated under Niccolò Longobardo offer better terms for comparison
with other missions than those created under Matteo Ricci’s leadership.
A second consideration has to do with the presence of European colo-
nial power as a factor in missionary activity. While the East Asian mis-
sions were carried out without the coercive force of Spanish or Portuguese
armies, this was not the case in the Jesuits’ other enterprises. But the im-
perial eye saw far more than its hand could grasp, and the reach of Iberian
or French power often extended only scant miles from those nations’
fortified settlements.6 Jesuits whose bases were properly within the bounds
of empire often conducted missions to areas far beyond the limits of colo-
nial coercion, in lands where indigenous rulers retained a high degree of
control over their affairs. Accordingly, one should not posit an absolute
divide between those missionary activities conducted in proximity to Eu-
407
Conclusion F


ropean outposts and those developed in contested areas. To be sure, before
the eighteenth century, few colonial armies followed behind the Jesuits
who traveled with Huron bands about the snowy fastness of Canada, and
only slave-seeking bandeirantes dared penetrate the highlands of Paraguay
to raid the Society’s reductions there. In those areas, as in many others,
missionaries carried out their evangelization projects with the cooperation
of indigenous groups. Without at least the tacit approval of native peo-
ples, the Jesuits could entertain no hope of realizing their goals. Moreover,
there was a continual ebb and flow of personnel between colonial colleges
and mission territories, with the former serving as staging posts for the lat-
ter as well as safe havens for missionaries in times of trouble.
One of the best avenues for comparing Jesuit missions emanates from
their common starting point, the language barrier between the priests and
their intended converts. In the Vice-Province, the missionaries’ degree of
engagement with Chinese language and thought had a decisive impact on
their ability to create and sustain their image as worthy interlocutors for
the indigenous elite. It took the combined efforts of individuals such as
Matteo Ricci and Lazzaro Cattaneo to uncover the rudiments of guanhua
and organize what they had learned according to grammatical rules with
which they and their confreres were familiar. Elsewhere, the linguistic
challenge was just as formidable, and Jesuits used similar techniques for
deconstructing languages and reassembling them in forms understandable
to Europeans. This endeavor is exemplified by João Rodrigues’s artes for
the Japanese language, as well as by the Jesuits’ pioneering grammars of
the languages of Angola, Chile, and southern India—not to mention the
missionaries’ more ambitious projects of creating a new lingua franca for
use across areas with what they deemed excessive linguistic diversity, such
as the “general language” they devised in Brazil for the peoples of the
Tupi-Guaraní cultural area.7
The production of linguistic treatises represents an advanced point on
the path from ignorance to fluency. Earlier along that course, other Jesuits
had experiences similar to those of Michele Ruggieri and his “painting”
classes with his first Chinese master. The Tyrolean missionary Eusebio
Francisco Kino (1645–1711), who spent decades in the high deserts of
northern Mexico and on the parched coast of Baja California, went “with
ink-well in hand whenever the Indians were present,” acquiring their
tongue as best he could by listening to his interlocutors and quickly jot-
ting down the correct pronunciation.8 Kino’s urge to compile and orga-
408
E Conclusion


nize native languages was similar to that of Paul le Jeune (1591–1664), su-
perior of the Society’s mission to New France in the 1630s. Reflecting on
the challenge of acquiring Montagnais and Algonquin, le Jeune averred
that “before knowing a language, it was necessary for me to make books
from which to learn it.” For him, the key to picking up any of the indige-
nous peoples’ tongues resided in “composing it often, in learning a great
many words, and in acquiring their accent.” Despite his claim that Euro-
pean languages differed greatly from the tongues of the people of the East-
ern Woodlands, le Jeune claimed consolation in one crucial fact: “People
may call them barbarians as much as they please, but their language is
very regular.”9
Even for the Jesuits, some language barriers remained insurmountable.
In those instances, missionaries had to rely on auxiliaries to bridge the
communication gap between a lingua franca and the local dialect—even if
this meant sacrificing precision, not to mention the moral problems posed
by hearing confessions through intermediaries. In China, realizing that it
did no good merely to lament that their Mandarin was often of little use
beyond the urban centers where their mission stations were located, the
men of the Vice-Province pragmatically relied on a corps of catechist-
interpreters. While years of residence in a given area surely gave the Jesuits
familiarity with the seven major regional tongues in China, their travels
along rural circuits continually suggested that they were in a veritable Ba-
bel.10 Similarly, the transatlantic slave trade created daunting linguistic
challenges for Jesuits intent on curing the greatest possible number of
souls. Such was the case at Cartagena de Indias, where Alonso de Sandoval
(1576–1652) coordinated the Society’s efforts to baptize and indoctrinate
the hundreds of African slaves who were disembarked there each year. The
sheer variety of linguistic groups and the drifting population of slaves in
the Colombian port made Sandoval believe that it was impossible to learn
all the necessary languages. Not only was there “no one who could teach
them,” he pointed out, but also the priests’ dealings with slaves did not
“suffice for them to stick to us naturally.” To remedy the situation, the
Cartagena Jesuits tried to keep up contacts with slaves from different Afri-
can regions, whom they would summon (if, that is, their masters permit-
ted it) to act as interpreters in seeking to communicate with the moribund
survivors of the Middle Passage.11
It goes without saying that the Jesuits’ goal in their language studies was
to equip themselves with the means for transmitting the Christian mes-
409
Conclusion F


sage. But the capacity to communicate is not always equivalent to the
ability to persuade. Where allies bearing the gun and the lash were not
present, rhetoric was one of the missionaries’ only means of claiming
souls. In East Asia, the Jesuits engaged in publication efforts to cast their
words farther into the realm of Chinese and Japanese discourse than their
voices could carry. But their printing enterprise would have floundered if
not for the help they received from learned indigènes about elegant form
and style, as well as how to intone proper cultural resonances. In other ar-
eas they employed whichever form of communication carried the degree
of authority to which they aspired. Among the Hurons and Iroquois, mis-
sionaries aimed to develop their language skills to the point where they
could be accepted as orators. Once they were deemed worthy of address-
ing elite assemblies, they acquired a degree of social respect that no lan-
guage course or grammar study could afford them.12 Moreover, the Jesuits
were not averse to adapting the images and metaphors that they used to
explain Christian concepts to fit their hosts’ cultural contexts: whereas in
China they linked Confucian moral norms to the Ten Commandments,
in Japan they associated loyalty to the feudal lord with duty to Deus, and
in the Great Lakes region they endowed divine personages with the fear-
some attributes of Iroquois warriors.13
Persuasion implies confrontation, and Jesuits sallied forth into battle
against other religious traditions and their representatives across the globe.
Their antagonism toward the Buddhist clergy in China has been amply
adduced throughout this book, as well as their attempts to undermine the
spiritual certainties of prospective converts. But neither in the case of the
men of the Vice-Province nor elsewhere were missionaries well versed in
their opponents’ theologies and cosmologies prior to arriving in the mis-
sion field. They had to acquire ways to argue against the foundations of
non-Christian practices in situ if they were to supplant them with Cathol-
icism. They also had to identify who their religious rivals were in any
given mission field. Every series of Annual Letters contains accounts of
bugbears, such as “bonzes” in Japan, mullahs in the Moluccas, yogis in In-
dia, or Andean religious specialists in Peru. But the Jesuits appear to have
invested in the study of other religions only in proportion to the degree of
antagonism they perceived from the representatives of those traditions.
Compare, for example, their blanket dismissal of Daoism and the Daoshi
in China to their tactics of engagement toward Buddhism and the bonzes.
When Jesuits confronted other religious professionals, they sought op-
410
E Conclusion


portunities to make public displays of their skills, whether prophylactic,
ritual, rhetorical, or scientific. After all, their capacity to predict, explain,
or deliver the miraculous better than their rivals largely determined their
ability to gain social legitimacy as well as their capacity to provoke conver-
sions. In China, the Jesuits’ showdown with indigenous astronomers en-
sured the political protection of the mission, while, according to their re-
ports, the performance of Catholic ceremonies that alleviated epidemics
or droughts where other rituals had failed won new adherents of Tianzhu
jiao. Jesuits elsewhere also made use of such skills. For instance, the Soci-
ety’s missions to the Guaraní in Paraguay often became stages for contests
between priests and shamans over the mastery of effective rituals, healing
techniques, and moral teachings.14 In southern India in the early 1680s,
one Jesuit found himself caught between two war parties bent on captur-
ing the village where he had his residence and church. One of the rival
captains brought soldiers, retainers, and Brahmins to hear the missionary
speak of the origin of Hindu deities. “I proved to him by reason, and by
arguments drawn from their own stories,” claimed the Jesuit with an eye
to both self-preservation and the conversion of the other, “that the ‘First
Cause’ alone was God and that his gods were not.”15
But besting opponents in cosmological confrontations was only half
the battle for claiming souls. Recall that Rodrigo de Figueiredo moved
from one set of problems to another the moment his Chinese peasant in-
terlocutors conceded defeat and asked for an explanation of Christian
teaching. A general tactic used by the Jesuits for building a new theologi-
cal edifice in the minds of prospective converts was derived from the long
tradition of catechesis teaching in Europe. They would start, in the bibli-
cal sense, with the beginning, first introducing the notion of a single God,
then discoursing on the elements of Judeo-Christian morality, and after-
wards explaining the Incarnation and Passion of Christ. Missionaries con-
sidered this pattern of instruction equally applicable in other parts of Asia
as well as in the Americas. During his attempts to set up missions in the
Indonesian archipelago at the same time Islam was spreading over that
area, Manuel Ferreira (1586–1625) would present himself to a local ruler as
the ambassador of “the King of the Heavens who sent him to offer His di-
vine law . . . and the salvation for his soul that he would find in none
other.”16 And António de Andrade gave a summary of Christian teachings
to a group of lamas at Tsaparang in the 1620s, explaining the notion of the
Trinity in halting Tibetan and without translations for terms such as “per-
411
Conclusion F


son, nature, to proceed, faith, grace, etc.”17 Among the Iroquois in North
America, French Jesuits used a similar approach by introducing God, the
Great Voice, who made “the many things we see when we move our eyes
from side to side.”18
Much as the Jesuits tended to order their own learning processes ac-
cording to “plans of studies,” so they organized their catechetical efforts in
a logical order. In fact, it is only the modern observer who discerns a divi-
sion between the Society’s sacred and secular pedagogical activities. The
same impulse toward educational uniformity that made texts such as
Manuel Álvares’s De Institutione Grammatica (first edition 1572), Cipriano
Suárez’s De Arte Rhetorica (first edition 1562), and the Commentarii
Collegii Coninmbricensis (first edition 1593) the standard textbooks for the
different phases of the Jesuit academic program throughout Europe also
gave rise to widely used doctrine manuals such as Marco Jorge’s Doutrina
Christã (first edition 1566). It should come as no surprise that missionaries
who were trained on such texts should attempt to replicate them in the
overseas missions. João da Rocha’s Tianzhu shengjiao qimeng, a Chinese
version of Jorge’s doctrine dialogue, has already been mentioned, and
other adaptations were made for use in regions as far distant as Brazil, In-
dia, and eastern Europe. In 1624 Mateus Cardoso published a Kikongo
translation of this text at Lisbon and promptly shipped it off to the mis-
sion field for distribution. During his trek overland from the coastal en-
clave of Luanda to the Kongolese capital São Salvador the following year,
Cardoso (ca. 1584–ca. 1626) was pleased with how this cartilha helped him
to cement his friendship with local potentates. After giving a copy to one
lord—as a substitute for a Portuguese primer that the missionary had left
on a previous visit—the Jesuit implored him to teach doctrine to others,
commenting that “he could perform the office of master well since he
knew how to read.”19
While the distribution of doctrine manuals was an effective means for
spreading the Christian message, one should not assume that the Jesuits
were at a loss when it came to teaching the illiterate. To start with, Marcos
Jorge’s catechism and its translations were written in simple dialogue
form; moreover, the Society’s missionaries made extensive use of song for
inculcating doctrine. Drawing on proven methods used among rustics in
Europe, the China Jesuits and their lay auxiliaries combined Christian
themes with popular tunes and encouraged especially women and chil-
dren to sing along. But the missionaries’ use of music in East Asia was less
412
E Conclusion


developed than it was in other mission fields in Africa and the Americas,
where song was the most important means of indoctrination. For in-
stance, Mateus Cardoso records that he was met by a group of children
outside São Salvador in 1625 who took him the final mile into the capital
“in a procession with flags hoisted, singing the prayers in the language of
the Kongo.”20 And in the coastal mountains of Brazil, António Vieira
(1608–1697) reported that his colleagues gathered groups of Indian chil-
dren to sing the catechism which the priests had composed “in verses and
very appropriate tones.” Recording the growing numbers of youths at
each successive doctrine class, Vieira saw proof of the assertion of Brazil
mission founder Manuel da Nóbrega (1517–1570) that “with music and
vocal harmony he dared to summon to himself all of the heathens in
America.”21
As I have demonstrated, the China Jesuits envisioned and tracked the
spiritual path of their converts far beyond the baptismal font and the doc-
trine class. After passing through the catechumenate, adult Christians
were expected to consider themselves part of a community of believers
and participate in group rituals. In the Vice-Province there were two basic
forms of collective spirituality: organizational brotherhoods and devo-
tional sodalities. While the former served to structure the Jesuits’ mission
church, the latter permitted the exercise of more intense and varied forms
of piety for those possessed of higher levels of fervor. Yet while the confra-
ternity model was especially appropriate in Ming and Qing society in
light of the strong indigenous impulse to create hui, such forms of group
piety were not limited to China. In Paraguay, Jesuits instituted Marian so-
dalities in their reductions as a way to provide specific channels for the
more devout among their Guaraní Christians. Antonio Ruiz de Montoya
(1585–1652) described how in the late 1630s confraternity members were
entrusted with special roles in respect to the dying and the dead; they were
to keep prayer vigils and summon the priest when the time for Last Rites
drew near.22 Elsewhere, brotherhoods sought to provide a measure of
group solidarity for some of the Christians who received pastoral care
from the Jesuits, as in Bogotá, where the Society’s priests organized a con-
fraternity for African slaves with the invocation of Saint Mary Major.23
And when their spiritual charges faced mortal danger, as on the Japanese
island of Kyushu during the Tokugawa era persecutions, other Jesuit-
inspired groups showed their utility for enhancing the bonds of group sol-
idarity and mutual protection.24
413
Conclusion F


Another manifestation of lay piety—fostered by necessity in many mis-
sions as a result of a lack of priests—is found in the activities of the Jesuits’
native auxiliaries. Just as the men of the Vice-Province relied on catechists
and huizhang for coordinating rituals and maintaining the cohesion of the
mission church, Jesuits in other mission fields also had recourse to lay as-
sistants. Having lost hope that they would ever receive enough recruits to
meet their needs, the missionaries in southeastern India pleaded in their
1667 Annual Letter for catechists. After a training period, these individu-
als could go “into the towns and suburbs, into villages and marketplaces,
in the countryside and the forests, using their time according to our in-
structions, like hunters skilled in not only making fresh captures, but
also in domesticating the inhabitants of the forest.”25 In the case of the
longhouse societies of New France, the task of leading collective prayers
and indoctrinating new church members often fell to clan mothers. These
women had taken over this important activity from the Iroquois men
whom the Jesuits had originally appointed to the task with the title of
“prayer captains” or “dogiques”—a term that made its way around the
world from Japan, where dojuku (literally “cohabitant”) was the label used
to denote the priests’ lay auxiliaries.26
Yet a further indication of the Jesuits’ intended evolution for their mis-
sion churches across the globe can be found in their attempts to introduce
new devotions into the standard set of Catholic ritual activities (prayer
routines, attendance at mass, reception of the sacraments). Starting in ear-
nest in the 1630s, the men of the Vice-Province encouraged the use of
penitential discipline among some Chinese Christians, instructing them
in the proper modes of corporal mortification and organizing Brother-
hoods of the Passion for collective exercises. Since these practices often
formed a central part of the Jesuits’ personal devotions during their aca-
demic and pastoral training in Europe, it is not surprising that missionar-
ies brought a penchant for this type of devotion with them overseas.
Mateus Cardoso described how he placed a flagellant’s lash in the hand of
Garcia I of Kongo and informed him that it was for use during Advent
and Lent. The Jesuit also offered him a cilice and encouraged the king to
wear it next to his skin “for doing penance.”27 Priests from the Province of
Paraguay also encouraged corporal mortification as a correct manifesta-
tion of shame and penitence, remarking how some men took readily to
“bloody disciplines . . . not even sparing the face its own special punish-
ment.” Indian women practiced similar pious rigors, although they did
them in secret since the Jesuits did not admit them to “the public disci-
414
E Conclusion


plines of the men.”28 One wonders, however, if the task of instilling
such forms of devotion was as difficult elsewhere as it was in China,
where indigenous moral teachings ran counter to valorizations of corporal
mortification. At least in Canada, missionaries had little trouble encour-
aging their spiritual charges to practice discipline. Jesuit accounts report
the incorporation of native practices such as immersion in freezing water
or burning flesh with coals into the standard European repertoire of hair
shirts, fasting, and lashings.29
In spite of all these manifestations of zeal, experienced missionaries
knew that the work of creating Christian communities was a long-term
effort. For all of the military metaphors found in the Jesuits’ reports from
their mission fields, they were committed to a war of attrition, not to en-
gaging their foes in skirmishes and raids. Herein lay the basic contradic-
tion at the heart of all early modern missionary endeavors: missionary
vocations were the product of fervor bred from tales of miracles and hero-
ism, heightened emotional states that often degenerated into impatience
at the real difficulties involved in attaining bona fide conversions and in-
stilling Catholic devotional habits in non-Christian lands. Stories from
some mission fields, such as Japan, told of hundreds of converts in rela-
tively short spans, spurring great expectations elsewhere. But when similar
tallies failed to materialize, frustrations were felt at both the individual
and the institutional level. In the case of the Vice-Province of China, the
sluggish pace of conversions led to decades of hand-wringing at the Soci-
ety’s headquarters in Rome and the appointment of more than one Visi-
tor. Some Jesuit superiors chose to deflate their correspondents’ hopes for
rapid apostolic triumphs before similar pressures were felt in their ap-
pointed territories. In 1633, less than a decade after the first missionaries
arrived in the St. Lawrence valley, Paul le Jeune compared his incipient
mission to others that were slow to develop. “It was thirty-eight years,” he
asserted, “before anything was accomplished in Brazil. How long have
they been waiting at the gates of China?” Fittingly, le Jeune drove home
his point with a metaphor drawn from nature: “Let it be remembered that
mushrooms spring up in a night, while it requires years to ripen the fruits
of the palm.”30
Diversity amid Unity
While the themes suggested here indicate a great deal of commonality
among Jesuit missions in different corners of the early modern world, one
415
Conclusion F


should not overstate the possibilities for comparison. After all, the wide
spectrum of cultures in which the missionaries worked poses a number of
problems for those seeking to establish a unified vision of the Society’s ac-
tivities. Even the Jesuits themselves were aware of the perils of subsuming
all of their pastoral efforts in non-Christian lands under the rubric of
“missionary activity.” José de Acosta (1540–1600), for one, was clearly
aware of the challenges that faced the Society’s men in civilizations as dis-
parate as those of Peru and China. This Spanish missionary in the An-
des pointed to the problems of language and how the use of characters
rather than words created terminological ambiguity: “For the Indian, with
twenty-four letters that he knows how to write and join together, can
write and read all the words in the world, and the mandarin with his hun-
dred thousand letters will be hard put to it to write any proper name such
as Martín or Alonso, and much less to write the names of things that
he does not recognize.”31 Recall that the path to the discovery of such
incommensurability in China led the Jesuits to the point of rupture, and
even tragedy, as in the case of Nicolas Trigault’s suicide during the Terms
Controversy. Elsewhere, the adoption or imposition of European tongues
largely obviated the need to tax the missionaries’ capacities as interpret-
ers—or their health.
The physical conditions of missionary work in different regions also
varied to such an extent as to make easy comparison impossible. While
the men of the Vice-Province frequently complained of poverty and even
hunger, the most trying experience for many was their journey along
the Cape route. Those who survived the trip to the mission field often
enjoyed conditions of luxury, compared to the hardships suffered by
their confreres (excepting, of course, the thousands of Jesuits who staffed
the order’s colleges throughout the world). Leaving aside the handful of
China missionaries who were swept up in the tumult of the Manchu inva-
sions, the majority of the Society’s men in the Ming and Qing empires
busied themselves with pastoral and proselytizing duties in the calm envi-
ronment of cities and villages. Traveling their mission circuits was a far cry
from António de Andrade’s trek to Tibet, during which he had to make
headway across the Himalayan snow lying down, “as when one swims, so
as not to sink into it.”32 Likewise, while José Monteiro was keen to tell re-
cruits to the Vice-Province how to express their disgust at their domestics’
gastronomic missteps, at least he did not have to lament a lack of rats to
eat, as Luís Figueira (ca. 1574–1643) did during a trip through the moun-
416
E Conclusion


tains of northern Brazil in 1607.33 And although the Jesuits’ compounds in
cities such as Peking, Shanghai, and Hangzhou may have had only rice
paper to keep the cold from flowing through their windows, that was
surely nothing compared to the rigors of a winter spent in a low-slung
Huron longhouse cramped between smoldering embers within and snow-
drifts without.34
One final order of considerations about the limits of comparison
among the Society’s missions worldwide has to do with the Jesuits’ links to
European imperial projects. As mentioned earlier, the degree to which co-
lonial armies exercised control over the vast dominions claimed by their
sovereigns is easy to overestimate. But that fact did not prevent the Jesuits
who worked beyond the farthest shadow of European power from consid-
ering their efforts to be in concert with other imperial objectives. A hand-
ful of examples will suffice. The coincidence of colonial and missionary
aims was certainly evident in southern India, where the Jesuits’ apostolic
efforts among the inhabitants of the Fishery Coast strengthened the com-
mercial links between the Portuguese and native pearl traders.35 Further il-
lustrations can be found in the numerous reducciones, aldeias, and réserves
scattered across the colonial hinterlands of the Americas. In Japan, the Je-
suits managed to establish their mission on a firm footing by acting as in-
termediaries between the local lords and the Portuguese traders. And in
the case of the Vice-Province of China, the reciprocal relationship be-
tween the Jesuits and the city of Macau offers a clear case of the melding
of secular and religious goals. The colony was at once the missionaries’
safe haven, staging post, and conduit for salaries and supplies. These fa-
vors gave the Jesuits ample reason to rise repeatedly to the defense of
Macau’s interests—and even the Portuguese enclave’s very existence—be-
fore the Dragon Throne.
In some instances, the physical proximity between the men of the Soci-
ety and colonial officials and settlers led to a conflation of aims and atti-
tudes. The degree of confidence expressed in some Jesuit writings borders
on folly, if only because the missionaries themselves exaggerated their abil-
ity to summon force to carry out their own projects. Recall how Alonso
Sánchez traveled from Asia to Europe intent on selling his idea of an easy
conquest of China to Philip II of Spain. Similar episodes of missionary
bluster seem in proportion to the degree of hostility that the Jesuits per-
ceived in the mission field and what they imagined their compatriots
could do about it. For example, although Paul le Jeune expressed his con-
417
Conclusion F


cerns about the difficulty of the conversion enterprise in Canada in the
1630s, he did not shy away from suggesting that some gesture be made to-
ward the Iroquois akin to the “great show of power made at first by the
Portuguese in the East and West Indies.”36 Nearly thirty years later he
again insisted that the war drum was the best instrument for setting the
tone for the missions in the Great Lakes region: “The Iroquois are worse
than the bonzes and Brahmins. They are not to be defeated by the
pen, but by force of arms; and there are no pirates on the China Sea so
dangerous.”37
But the relationships between the Society’s missionary enterprises and
European overseas empires were not always symbiotic. The Jesuits often
worked at cross-purposes to secular European interests. At times they pur-
sued their own worldly aims with an eye to prestige (if not profit). For in-
stance, the missionaries’ conflicts with Spaniards and Paulistas over the
Guaranís in Paraguay in the 1630s and 1640s displayed a degree of institu-
tional independence, assertion, and ambition on par with their takeover
of temporal control over the port of Nagasaki in the 1580s. Moreover, the
oftentimes tense relationship between the Society and other ecclesiastical
institutions, such as the Inquisition or the Mendicant orders, in different
colonial societies offers further evidence of the contradictory aims of these
different imperial agents despite their common goal of implanting Chris-
tianity.38 Such contradictions were no less glaring than the commonplace
divergences of purpose between crown officials, private merchants, and
representatives of the secular church hierarchy overseas. They were the
coarse texture of the loose-knit web of empire that the Europeans cast
over the early modern globe.
In China, however, many of the questions raised here about the rela-
tions between missionary activity and imperial projects were moot. The
Jesuits could not summon a European army to force a change of heart
among those who rebuked them or denied the veracity of their theological
arguments. Once inside the domains of the Ming and Qing emperors,
they severed their ties to the solid institutional reputation that the Society
enjoyed among Europeans. From the standpoints of indigenous language,
law, and learning, the Jesuits found themselves at the bottom of the cul-
tural heap at the beginning of their enterprise. While they did gain pres-
tige over the course of the decades surveyed in this book, they remained
no more than diplomats in China; they could influence the powerful only
through friendship or persuasion. One of the best indicators of the tenu-
418
E Conclusion


ousness of the Jesuits’ position in that country was their hesitancy about
enrolling native priests in their ranks. Not only were they anxious about
their ability to make Chinese recruits live up to their vows, but also they
feared that no mandarin would force a renegade priest to submit to the
correction of the Vice-Province’s superiors.
The fact that the China Jesuits were able to mount a missionary enter-
prise and sustain it for almost a century and a half in the Ming and Qing
empires is a testament to the Society’s ability to train its men and coordi-
nate its proselytizing and pastoral efforts effectively. In their efforts to cre-
ate a mission church deeply rooted in Chinese society, however, the men
of the Vice-Province were virtually alone for most of the period surveyed
here. Had European soldiers and settlers rather than other missionaries
joined them, perhaps their spiritual legacy would have been as enduring
in China as it was in other lands where they established missions. Even so,
vestiges of the Jesuits’ presence can still be found from the foot of the
Great Wall to the mouth of the Pearl River. Atop a bastion in the old walls
of Peking, the instruments used by Ferdinand Verbiest to calculate the im-
perial calendar sit beneath the same sun and stars. Visitors to the Forest
of Stele Museum at Xi’an can inspect a great stone slab carved with
Nestorian teachings, the same eighth-century monument to which Li
Zhizao and Manuel Dias the younger drew attention in print to demon-
strate the long pedigree of Christianity in China. Amid the bustle of
Shanghai, a Catholic cathedral can be found at the site of the former fam-
ily compound of Xu Guangqi, appropriately dedicated to Ignatius Loyola.
In a tomb located in a secluded grove not far from the shores of the famed
West Lake of Hangzhou, ossuaries containing the bones of Martino Mar-
tini and other missionaries sit undisturbed by the passage of time. And in
Macau, the imposing façade of the Jesuit church rises majestically above
the old city, despite the fact that the last Portuguese flag has been lowered
from above the governor’s residence. Curiosity impels most modern visi-
tors up the steep stone staircase at this last site to see what are known as
the Ruins of St. Paul’s. There they spend a few moments contemplating
the carvings of ships, dragons, and saints set in stone four centuries ago,
or perhaps they glance at the vista of sampans in the city’s inner harbor.
For these travelers, a voyage has ended on the very spot where the Jesuits’
journey into China began.
419
Conclusion F




bibliographic note
notes
illustration credits
index




Bibliographic Note
This study relies primarily on archival materials in Portugal and Italy, in
particular those found in the Ajuda Palace library in Lisbon and the cen-
tral archive of the Society of Jesus in Rome, the two principal reposito-
ries for sources relating to the Jesuits’ Asian missions. Ajuda houses the
Jesuítas na Ásia collection, consisting of sixty-one volumes and more than
thirty thousand manuscript pages, eighteenth-century copies of docu-
ments once found in the Society’s archive in Macau and related to both
the Vice-Province of China and the Province of Japan. A catalogue of this
collection was published by Francisco Cunha Leão in 1998 under the title
Jesuítas na Ásia: Catálogo e Guia (Lisbon, 2 vols.), but it contains little
more than the titles and subheadings of each text as they are found in the
documents themselves. While such information is a useful general guide
to the collection, it is often misleading. Anyone seeking to use the Jesuítas
na Ásia documents should read this catalogue closely, check the typescript
indices at Ajuda, and consult the archivist. Since the Ajuda Library has no
recent catalogue (its card catalogue is old and incomplete), consultation is
often the only way to identify sources.
The central archive of the Society of Jesus in Rome, known by its Latin
name Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (ARSI), was reconstructed at
its present site on Borgo Santo Spirito adjacent to St. Peter’s Square after
the order was suppressed in 1773 and its possessions dispersed across Eu-
rope. It is the central repository for the Society’s administrative docu-
ments. The Japonica-Sinica collection, those sources relating to the Prov-


ince of Japan and the Vice-Province of China, was the compendium used
most in this study. To a lesser extent, documents in the Lusitanica (Prov-
ince of Portugal) and Goana (Province of Goa) collections were also used.
Other sources, such as letters which touch on sensitive administrative is-
sues and “Indies Petitions,” are in the Fondo Gesuitico collection. While
there are a number of general sketches of the holdings at ARSI, there is no
complete descriptive catalogue of the archive. A list of the contents of
each volume can be found in the typescript catalogue at the archive, and
individual volumes of documents often contain lists of their documents.
The director of the archive, and the staff at ARSI, however, know their
collections well and can help researchers find materials.
Other Portuguese and Italian archives also house valuable materials. In
Portugal, the manuscript collection of the Biblioteca Nacional in Lisbon
contains a handful of codices (bound volumes of manuscripts) containing
papers from the China mission. In this library are also to be found two of
the volumes that originally belonged to the Jesuítas na Ásia collection.
Other sources are scattered about the Biblioteca Nacional’s holdings and
can be discovered only by chance or through references in scholarly publi-
cations. The staff of this library has been producing, piecemeal, a cata-
logue of its manuscripts for over two centuries with no end in sight. Nev-
ertheless, there is a serviceable card catalogue and an Internet-based search
engine which often contains information not found in other reference
tools available at the Biblioteca Nacional. The same can be said for the
Portuguese national archive, the Torre do Tombo. This study makes use
of documents found in the Cartório Jesuítico and the Armário Jesuítico,
two collections made up from sources seized upon the orders of the mar-
quis of Pombal after 1759. Their catalogues are very old and imprecise.
Persistence is essential for consulting these collections, which contain ad-
ministrative and financial information on the Province of Portugal, as
well as sources relating to overseas missions in the Portuguese Assistancy.
Further materials for this study were found at the Arquivo Histórico
Ultramarino in Lisbon, the Biblioteca da Academia das Ciências in Lisbon,
and the Biblioteca Pública/Arquivo Distrital in Évora.
Outside the central archive of the Society of Jesus, there are four
main Italian repositories for documents relating to the China mission.
The most important for this study by far was the Archivo della Propa-
ganda Fide, now located at the Pontificia Università Urbaniana close to
the Vatican. The collection of materials found in the Scritture Riferite nei
424
E Bibliographic Note


Congressi, Indie Orientali e Cina, is indispensable for understanding
the Rites Controversy and the arrival of the Propaganda bishops in the
late seventeenth century. Documents found at the Biblioteca Nazionale
Centrale, the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, and the Biblioteca Ca-
sanatense also proved of value. Only the first of these, the Biblioteca
Nazionale, has a specific catalogue of its holdings related to the Society of
Jesus. The Vatican Library has few reference guides to its Jesuit sources or,
indeed, to its other early modern collections. The documents at the
Casanatense Library related to China touch on the clashes between the Je-
suits and the Dominicans in Fujian, and contain sources on the Rites
Controversy and the Tournon legation.
To say more about the archival sources available to scholars interested
in working on the topic of the Jesuit mission to China would be redun-
dant. A comprehensive overview of the collections in Europe, Asia, and
America can be found on pp. 113–237 of the Handbook of Christianity in
China, published in 2001 by E. J. Brill (Leiden). Moreover, it would be
superfluous to include a list of the relevant secondary works on the Jesuits
in China since the Handbook is essentially an exhaustive bibliography of
the mission. Nicolas Standaert’s volume consists of almost one thousand
pages of citations of articles, monographs, and archival sources, divided
thematically. Each section of this massive work on Chinese Christianity
and Sino-Western relations contains a short essay and the relevant biblio-
graphical references. The international team contributing to the Hand-
book was made up of some of the best scholars working in the field today,
and both the essays and the bibliography are uniformly of high quality.
Readers seeking further information on aspects of the China mission,
such as the Jesuits’ scientific activity or their Chinese writings, should
consult the Handbook.
References to the secondary literature on topics not covered in the
Handbook can be found in the endnotes. These subjects include works on
the Society of Jesus, its development in Europe, and its expansion over-
seas. Other studies of the history of early modern Europe and, in particu-
lar, of early modern Catholicism are also cited in the notes. While it
would be impossible to give a full bibliography of this rich and expanding
field, interested readers should consult John O’Malley, Catholicism in
Early Modern History: A Guide to Research (St. Louis, 1988), and R. Po-
Chia Hsia, ed., A Companion to the Reformation World (Oxford, 2004),
for introductory information and guides to past and present literature.
425
Bibliographic Note F




Notes
Abbreviations
AHSI
Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu
AHU
Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Lisbon
AL
Annual Letter
Alden
Dauril Alden, The Making of an Enterprise: The Jesuits in Portugal, Its
Empire, and Beyond, 1540–1750 (Stanford, 1996)
Álvares Orders
João Álvares, Visita da Provincia de Portugal, [Coimbra?], 1613, ARSI
FG 1540, bundle 6
AN/TT
Arquivo Nacional/Torre do Tombo, Lisbon
APF
Archivo della Propaganda Fide, Rome
ARSI
Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu, Rome
BA
Biblioteca da Ajuda, Lisbon
BACL
Biblioteca da Academia das Ciências, Lisbon
BNL
Biblioteca Nacional, Lisbon
BPADE
Biblioteca Pública e Arquivo Distrital, Évora
CCT
Nicolas Standaert and Ad Dudink, eds., Chinese Christian Texts from the
Roman Archives of the Society of Jesus, 12 vols. (Taibei, 2002)
Chan
Albert Chan, Chinese Books and Documents in the Jesuit Archives in
Rome: A Descriptive Catalogue (Armonk, N.Y., 2002)
Charity CS
Renhui huigui (Charity Confraternity Statutes), ARSI Jap-Sin II 169.1
CHC
D. Twitchett and F. W. Mote, The Cambridge History of China, 15 vols.
(Cambridge, 1976–)
Dehergne
Joseph Dehergne, Répertoire des Jésuites de Chine de 1552 à 1800 (Rome, 1973)
DI
Josef Wicki, ed., Documenta Indica, 17 vols. (Rome, 1948–1988)
Dunne
George Dunne, Generation of Giants: The Story of the Jesuits in China in
the Last Decades of the Ming Dynasty (Notre Dame, Ind., 1962)


East West
Charles Ronan and Bonnie Oh, eds., East Meets West: The Jesuits in
China, 1582–1773 (Chicago, 1988)
FG
Fondo Gesuitico Collection at ARSI
Figueiredo Ningbo
Rodrigo de Figueiredo, Report of Mission to Ningbo District, in
Manuel Dias the younger, AL Vice-Province 1627, Shanghai, 9 May
1628, ARSI Jap-Sin 115-I:144r–153v.
FR
Pasquale d’Elia, ed., Fonti Ricciane: Documenti Originali Concernanti
Matteo Ricci e la Storia delle Prime Relazione tra l’Europa e la Cina
(1579–1615), 3 vols. (Rome, 1942–1949)
Funeral Ritual
[Francesco Saverio Filippucci and António Li], Lin sang chu bin yi shi
(Ritual Sequence for Attending Funerals and Organizing the
Procession), [Canton, ca. 1685], ARSI Jap-Sin II 169.4
Goa
Goana Collection at ARSI
Gouvea
António de Gouvea, Cartas Ânuas da China, Horácio P
. Araújo, ed.
(Lisbon, 1998)
Guerreiro
Fernão Guerreiro, Relação Anual das Coisas que fizeram os Padres da
Companhia de Jesus nas Partes da Índia Oriental, ed. Artur Viegas
(pseud.), 3 vols. (Lisbon, 1605; reprint, Coimbra, 1930–1942)
Handbook
Nicolas Standaert, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China, vol. 1, 635–
1800 (Leiden, 2001)
Informação
Niccolò Longobardo, Informação da Missão da China, Nanxiong, 28
November 1612, ARSI Jap-Sin 113:265r–281r
JA
Jesuítas na Ásia Collection at Biblioteca da Ajuda
Jami et al.
Catherine Jami, Peter Englefriet, and Gregory Blue, eds., Statecraft and
Intellectual Renewal in Late Ming China: The Cross-cultural Synthesis of
Xu Guangqi (1562–1633) (Leiden, 2001)
Jap-Sin
Japonica-Sinica Collection at ARSI
Lus
Lusitanica Collection at ARSI
Marian CS
Shengmu huigui (Marian Confraternity Statutes), ARSI Jap-Sin II 169.3
Masini
Federico Masini, ed., Western Humanistic Culture Presented to China by
Jesuit Missionaries (XVII–XVIII Centuries) (Rome, 1996)
Matos Orders
Gabriel de Matos, Ordens dos Vizitadores e Superiores Universais da
Missão da China com Algumas Respostas do Nosso Reverendo Padre
Geral, Macau, 1621, BAJA 49-V-7:217r–232r
Monteiro Praxis
José Monteiro, Vera et Unica Praxis breviter ediscendi, ac expeditissime
loquendi Sinicum idioma, suapte natura adeo difficile . . . In Usum
Tyronum Missionariorum [Fujian?, ca. 1700], BACL Mss. Azul 421
OS
Pietro Tacchi-Venturi, ed., Opere Storiche del P
. Matteo Ricci S.I., 2 vols.
(Macerata, 1911–1913)
Palmeiro Orders
André Palmeiro, Ordens que o Padre André Palmeiro Visitor de Japão e
China deixou a Vice-Provincia da China vizitandoa no anno de 1629
aos 15 de Agosto, Macau, 15 January 1631, ARSI Jap-Sin 100:20r–39v
Ratio China
Manuel Dias the elder, Ratio Studiorum para os Nossos que ham de Estudar
as letra e lingua da China, [Macau?], 1624, BAJA 49-V-7:310v–319v
428
E Abbreviations


Ratio Studiorum
Society of Jesus, Ratio Studiorum, Plan Raisonée et Institution des Études
dans la Compagnie de Jesus, ed. Adrien Demoustier and Dominique
Julia (Paris, 1997)
Ross
Andrew Ross, A Vision Betrayed: The Jesuits in Japan and China, 1542–
1742 (Maryknoll, N.Y., 1994)
SF
Anastasius van de Wyngaert, ed., Sinica Franciscana, 9 vols. in 14 bks.
(Quaracchi-Florence, 1929–1997)
SWCRJ
Sino-Western Cultural Relations Journal
Vieira Orders
Francisco Vieira, Regimento pera os Padres e Irmãos da Companhia que
se embarcão de Portugal pera a India, Goa, January 1616, ARSI FG
721/II, folder 3
Xavier CS
Sheng Fengshike huigui (Confraternity of St. Francis Xavier Statutes),
ARSI Jap-Sin II 169.2
Introduction
1. António Leite, AL College of Macau 1621, Macau, 30 December 1621, BAJA 49-
V-5:341v–343r.
2. See Andrew Plaks, Four Masterworks of the Ming Novel (Princeton, 1987), 183–
276.
3. “Early modern Catholicism” is a phrase coined by John O’Malley to replace
terms such as “Catholic Reformation” and “Counter-Reformation,” as well as the
more recent notion of “Confessionalization.” The subject of the China mission does
not fit easily into such categories, since they all imply forms of dialogue with a shared
Christian past and specific features of European society, culture, and history. See John
O’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cam-
bridge, Mass., 2000), 119–143.
4. Three surveys offer synoptic overviews of the evolution of early modern Catholi-
cism: Jean Delumeau, Le Catholicisme entre Luther et Voltaire (Paris, 1971); R. Po-
Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770 (Cambridge, 1998); and Robert
Bireley, The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450–1700: A Reassessment of the Counter Ref-
ormation (Washington, D.C., 1999).
5. William Bangert, A History of the Society of Jesus (St. Louis, 1986), 22, 45, and 46.
6. An overview of the Society’s early years can be found in John O’Malley, The First
Jesuits (Cambridge, Mass., 1993).
7. For a general view of missionary activity in Europe with special emphasis on
the Jesuits, see Louis Châtellier, The Religion of the Poor: Rural Missions and the
Formation of Modern Catholicism, c. 1500–c. 1800, trans. Brian Pearce (Cambridge,
1997).
8. An excellent analysis of a Jesuit college in Europe can be found in R. Po-Chia
Hsia, Society and Religion in Münster, 1535–1618 (New Haven, 1984), 59–92.
429
Notes to Pages 2-8 F


9. For a survey of the historiography of the Society of Jesus and the currents of Eu-
ropean historical thought that impinged upon it, see John O’Malley, “The Historiog-
raphy of the Society of Jesus: Where Does It Stand Today?” in O’Malley, Gauvin Al-
exander Bailey, Steven Harris, and T. Frank Kennedy, eds., The Jesuits: Cultures,
Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773 (Toronto, 1999), 3–37.
10. A persuasive interpretation of these repressive forces in Europe is Adriano
Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza: inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Turin, 1996).
11. Two studies are particularly helpful for understanding the early modern papacy:
A. D. Wright, The Early Modern Papacy: From the Council of Trent to the French Revo-
lution, 1564–1789 (New York, 2000); and Paolo Prodi, The Papal Prince, One Body and
Two Souls: The Papal Monarchy in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1987).
12. An analysis of the push toward conformity in ritual can be found in Simon
Ditchfield, Liturgy, Sanctity, and History in Tridentine Italy: Pietro Maria Campi and
the Preservation of the Particular (Cambridge, 1995).
13. Matteo Ricci and Nicolas Trigault, De Christiana Expeditione apud Sinas
(Augsburg, 1615).
14. E.g., Álvaro Semedo, Imperio de la China (Madrid, 1642), and the compendium
of late-seventeenth- and early-eighteenth-century Jesuit missionary reports edited by
Jean-Baptiste du Halde, Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses écrites des Missions Étrangères, 34
vols. (Paris, 1702–1776).
15. The representative work of this genre is Dunne. A more recent example is Ross.
16. E.g., Arnold Rowbotham, Missionary and Mandarin: The Jesuits at the Court of
China (Berkeley, 1942); Joseph Needham, “Chinese Astronomy and the Jesuit Mis-
sion: An Encounter of Cultures,” in Science and Civilization in China, 7 vols. (Cam-
bridge, 1954–), 3:437–458; and Pasquale d’Elia, Galileo in China: Relations through the
Roman College between Galileo and the Jesuit Scientist-Missionaries (1610–1640), trans.
Rufus Suter and Matthew Sciascia (Cambridge, Mass., 1960).
17. Two pioneering works reinvigorated the field: Jonathan Spence, The Memory
Palace of Matteo Ricci (New York, 1984); and Jacques Gernet, Chine et Christianisme:
Action et Réaction (Paris, 1982). Two other important studies, written in dialogue
with Gernet, are Nicolas Standaert, Yang Tingyun, Confucian and Christian in Late
Ming China: His Life and Thought (Leiden, 1988); and Erik Zürcher, Bouddhisme,
Christianisme et Société Chinoise (Paris, 1990).
18. E.g., Benjamin Elman, On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550–1900 (Cam-
bridge, Mass., 2005).
19. A synopsis of the Jesuit presence in the Portuguese empire is in Alden.
20. The same cannot be said about scholars of the Jesuit mission to Japan. E.g.,
Georg Schurhammer, Francis Xavier: His Life, His Times, trans. M. Joseph Costelloe,
4 vols. (Rome, 1973–1982); and Charles Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 1549–
1640 (Berkeley, 1951).
21. By force of numbers, the Jesuits were the dominant group in China during this
430
E Notes to Pages 8-19


period. Charts of the numbers of missionaries from different religious orders are in
Claudia von Collani, “Missionaries,” in Handbook, 307–308 and 322–354.
1. An Uneasy Foothold
1. On Xavier’s last days, see Georg Schurhammer, Francis Xavier: His Life, His
Times, trans. M. Joseph Costelloe, 4 vols. (Rome, 1973–1982), 4:567–591, 601–644.
2. Xavier to Francisco Pérez and Gaspar Barzaeus, Shangchuan, 13 November 1552,
ibid., 639.
3. Melchior Nunes Barreto, Enformação de algumas cousas acerca dos Custumes e
Leis do Reyno da China, Malacca (1554), in Raffaela d’Intino, ed., Enformação das
Cousas da China: Textos do Século XVI (Lisbon, 1989), 63–76.
4. Joseph Sebes, “The Precursors of Ricci,” in East West, 19–61.
5. Antonio Monserrate to Everard Mercurian, Goa, 26 October 1579, in DI 11:645.
Valignano’s original order is in Ruy Vicente to Everard Mercurian, Goa, 29 March
1579, ibid., 552; and Rui Vicente to Everard Mercurian, Goa, 13 November 1579, ibid.,
695.
6. Valignano first asked for Bernardino Ferrario (1537–1584), a Jesuit two years his
elder. See Michele Ruggieri to Everard Mercurian, Cochin, 12 November 1581, ARSI
Jap-Sin 9-I:58r.
7. Matteo Ricci and Francesco Pasio, two future China Jesuits who had sailed to In-
dia with Ruggieri, were twenty-seven and twenty-five years old, respectively, in 1579.
8. Alessandro Valignano, Summario de las Cosas que Pertencen a la Provincia de la
India Oriental y al Govierno della, Shimo (Japan), August 1580, in DI 13:200–201.
9. Ibid., 199.
10. Ruggieri to Claudio Aquaviva, Zhaoqing, 7 February 1583, in OS 2:412.
11. Francesco Pasio to Claudio Aquaviva, Zhaoqing, 5 February 1583, ARSI Jap-Sin
9-I:135r.
12. Ruggieri to Everard Mercurian, Macau, 12 November 1581, in OS 2:404.
13. Ruggieri to Claudio Aquaviva, Zhaoqing, 7 February 1583, in OS 2:413.
14. Ibid.
15. Francesco Pasio to Claudio Aquaviva, Macau, 15 December 1582, in OS 2:409.
16. Ruggieri to Claudio Aquaviva, Macau, 14 December 1582, in OS 2:407.
17. Ruggieri to Claudio Aquaviva, Zhaoqing, 7 February 1583, in OS 2:416.
18. Ibid.
19. Ruggieri to Claudio Aquaviva, Zhaoqing, 7 February 1583, in OS 2:418.
20. Matteo Ricci to Claudio Aquaviva, Zhaoqing, 30 November 1584, in OS 2:51.
21. Valignano to Claudio Aquaviva, Goa, 1 April 1585, in DI 14:4–5.
22. FR 1:195–196.
23. Valignano to Gil Gonzalez Davila, Goa, 23 December 1585, in DI 14:140.
24. FR 1:196.
431
Notes to Pages 29-35 F


25. Ibid.
26. Ibid., 203–204.
27. On Chinese attitudes toward the Portuguese, see John Wills Jr., “Relations with
the Maritime Europeans, 1514–1662,” in CHC 8:301–332 and 333–375.
28. Valignano to Claudio Aquaviva, Cochin, 20 December 1586, in DI 14:439–440.
29. One Zhejiang literatus, Xu Wei (1521–1593), wrote poems about Ruggieri. See
Albert Chan, “Two Chinese Poems Written by Hsü Wei (1521–1593) on Michele
Ruggieri, S.J. (1543–1607),” Monumenta Serica 44 (1996): 317–337.
30. Léon Bourdon, “Un Projet d’Invasion de la Chine par Canton à la Fin du XVIe
Siècle,” in Actas do III Colóquio Internacional de Estudos Luso-Brasileiros, Lisboa 1957
(Lisbon, 1960), 97–121.
31. Albert Chan, “Michele Ruggieri, S.J., and His Chinese Poems,” Monumenta
Serica 41 (1993): 129–176, esp. 132.
32. Matteo Ricci to Fabio de Fabii, Shaozhou, 12 November 1589, in OS 2:93.
33. Ricci to Alessandro Valignano, Shaozhou, 9 September 1589, in OS 2:82.
34. On the relations between China, Japan, and Korea, see Jurgis Elisonas, “The
Inseparable Trinity: Japan’s Relations with China and Korea,” in John Whitney
Hall and James McClain, eds., The Cambridge History of Japan, 6 vols. (Cambridge,
1988–1999), 4:235–265.
35. These two individuals also had Chinese names; Fernandes’s was Zhong Mingren
and Martins’s Huang Mingshao. Yet while both were of Chinese or mixed ances-
try, they identified themselves culturally with the Portuguese in Macau. For in-
stance, on joining the Society, Fernandes renounced any inheritance from his parents,
Pedro Fernandes and Leonor Fernandes, a couple he further noted had been “legiti-
mately married” according to Portuguese custom. See Sebastião Fernandes, Carta de
Renunciação, Nanjing, 16 January 1600, BAJA 49-V-16:5v–6v.
36. Ricci to Duarte de Sande, Nanchang, 29 August 1595, in OS 2:161.
37. On Ricci’s humanistic writings, see Howard Goodman and Anthony Grafton,
“Ricci, the Chinese, and the Toolkits of Textualists,” Asia Major, 3d ser., 2.2 (1990):
95–148.
38. Although Pasquale d’Elia suggests that Scielou was Shi Xing, the president of the
Ministry of War during the Japanese invasion of Korea in the 1590s, Jonathan Spence
contests that attribution. See FR 1:339, n. 1; and Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo
Ricci (New York, 1985), 287, n. 107.
39. Ricci to Duarte de Sande, Nanchang, 29 August 1595, in OS 2:128.
40. Ibid., 135.
41. On the symbolic importance of the Jesuit use of Chinese dress, see Willard Pe-
terson, “What to Wear? Observation and Participation by Jesuit Missionaries in Late
Ming Society,” in Stuart Schwartz, ed., Implicit Understandings: Observing, Reporting,
and Reflecting on the Encounters between Europeans and Other Peoples in the Early Mod-
ern Era (Cambridge, 1994), 403–421. On the Buddhist clergy, see Chün-Fang Yü, The
432
E Notes to Pages 35-43


Renewal of Buddhism in China: Chu-hung and the Late Ming Synthesis (New York,
1981), 138–191.
42. Ricci to Duarte de Sande, Nanchang, 29 August 1595, in OS 2:136–137.
43. Erik Zürcher, “Bouddhisme et Christianisme,” in Bouddhisme, Christianisme et
Société Chinoise (Paris, 1990), 11–42, esp. 35–36.
44. Sande, AL College of Macau 1595, Macau, 16 January 1596, ARSI Jap-Sin
52:121r.
45. Ricci to Duarte de Sande, Nanchang, 29 August 1595, in OS 2:145–146.
46. Ibid., 148–149.
47. Ibid., 154.
48. After a cordial first reception, Ricci changed his opinion of the wangfu clans, la-
beling them “turbulent and seditious men.” See FR 2:333.
49. Ricci to Girolamo Benci, Nanchang, 7 October 1595, in OS 2:164.
50. Manuel Dias the elder, AL College of Macau 1598, Macau, 1598, ARSI Jap-Sin
52:269r.
51. On the distinction between the rendering of Tianxue as “Learning from Heaven”
versus “Heavenly Studies,” see Willard Peterson, “Learning from Heaven: The Intro-
duction of Christianity and Other Western Ideas into Late Ming China,” in CHC
8:789–839, esp. 789–793.
52. Diogo Antunes, AL College of Macau 1602, Macau, 29 January 1603, ARSI Jap-
Sin 46:322v.
53. On this text and a translation, see Gail King, “For the Instruction of Those As-
piring to Be Christians: João Soeiro’s Tianzhu shengjiao yueyan,” SWCRJ 29 (2004):
59–67.
54. Guerreiro 1:256 and 2:114. A letter from Nanchang in 1604 claims that more than
two hundred conversions had been made that year, while Guerreiro’s published text
puts the figure at close to three hundred. See Manuel Dias the elder to João Álvares,
Nanchang, 29 November 1604, in OS 2:482.
55. Guerreiro 1:257–258.
56. See, for example, Claudia von Collani, “Missionaries,” in Handbook, 286–354,
esp. 310–311.
57. Nicolas Standaert arrived at this conclusion through statistical analysis of the
Chinese Christian community. See Standaert, “Chinese Christians,” in Handbook,
380–398, esp. 386–393.
58. Letter by Niccolò Longobardo, Shaozhou, 13 November 1604, in Guerreiro
2:126.
59. For example, the Jesuits reported that fifty-eight people were baptized at Nanchang
in 1609, including only one xiucai or shengyuan, the lowest level of civil service exam
graduate. See [Niccolò Longobardo?], AL China Mission 1608, Shaozhou, 21 Decem-
ber 1609, ARSI Jap-Sin 113:113v.
60. FR 1:253.
433
Notes to Pages 43-48 F


61. [António de Gouvea?], AL Fuzhou Residence 1646, Fuzhou, 1646, BAJA 49-V-
13:434r.
62. Guerreiro 1:246.
63. Ibid., 248–249.
64. Pantoja to Luís de Guzman, Peking, 9 March 1602, in Pantoja, Relacion de la
Entrada de Algunos Padres de la Cõpañia de IESVS en la China (Seville, 1605), 77v.
65. FR 2:328–329.
66. Ad Dudink, “Opponents,” in Handbook, 503–533, esp. 509; and FR 2:448–461.
67. Guerreiro 2:99.
68. João da Rocha to [Manuel Dias the elder?], Nanjing, 5 October 1602, BAJA 49-
V-5:10v.
69. See, for example, Arnold Rowbotham, Missionary and Mandarin: The Jesuits at
the Court of China (Berkeley, 1942), 60–118; and Ross, 136–140 and 155–190.
70. FR 2:347.
71. Informação, 274v.
72. FR 2:347
73. Informação, 274r.
74. FR 2:482.
75. Guerreiro 2:90.
76. Manuel Dias the elder to João Álvares, Nanchang, 22 November 1604, ARSI Jap-
Sin 14-I:178r.
77. Anon., Partial AL Japan Province, Nagasaki, 25 October 1600, BAJA 49-IV-59:3r
and 5v.
78. Manuel Dias the elder to João Álvares, Macau, 17 January 1601, ARSI Jap-Sin 14-
I:46v.
79. On July 31, 1611, news of the creation of the Province of Japan reached Macau.
The official patents for its separation from the former Province of the East Indies had
been issued on December 9, 1608. See Dehergne, 327.
80. Alessandro Valignano, Regimento . . . dos Negocios que o Padre Francisco
Rodrigues leva a cargo em Portugal, Macau, 1604, BAJA 49-V-18:265v.
2. In the Shadow of Greatness
1. Willard Peterson, “Why Did They Become Christians? Yang T’ing-yün, Li
Chih-tsao, and Hsü Kuang-ch’i,” in East West, 129–152. On Xu, see Nicolas Standaert,
“Xu Guangqi’s Conversion as a Multi-faceted Process,” in Jami et al., 170–185.
2. [Niccolò Longobardo?], AL China Mission 1608, Shaozhou, 21 December 1609,
ARSI Jap-Sin 113:111v. On late Ming Shanghai, see Timothy Brook, “Xu Guangqi in
His Context: The World of the Shanghai Gentry,” in Jami et al., 72–98; and Linda
Cooke Johnson, Shanghai: From Market Town to Treaty Port, 1074–1858 (Stanford,
1995), 66–95.
434
E Notes to Pages 48-59


3. Niccolò Longobardo, AL China Mission 1608, Shaozhou, 21 December 1609,
ARSI Jap-Sin 113:112r.
4. Feliciano da Silva to Gaspar Ferreira, Hangzhou, [November? 1612], in Niccolò
Longobardo, AL China Mission 1612, Nanxiong, 20 February 1613, ARSI Jap-Sin
113:238r.
5. On Yang’s Buddhist critics, see Nicolas Standaert, Yang Ting-yun, Confucian and
Christian in Late Ming China: His Life and Thought (Leiden, 1988), 162–182.
6. Informação, 276v.
7. On Pantoja’s petitions for Ricci’s gravesite, see FR 2:564–619.
8. Rodrigues to Claudio Aquaviva, Macau, 22 January 1616, ARSI Jap-Sin 16-
I:287v.
9. See, for example, Dunne, 106; and Nicolas Standaert, “The Creation of Chris-
tian Communities,” in Handbook, 543–575, esp. 546.
10. A 1610 report claimed that thirty years’ work had gleaned 2,500 converts. See FR
2:483.
11. Martin Heijdra estimates that the Chinese population ranged between 231 mil-
lion and 289 million in 1600, and rose to between 268 million and 353 million in 1650.
See Heijdra, “The Socio-economic Development of Rural China during the Ming,”
in CHC 8:436–439.
12. Nicolas Standaert, “Chinese Christians,” in Handbook, 380–393, esp. 382.
13. Longobardo, AL China Mission 1612, Nanxiong, 20 February 1613, ARSI Jap-Sin
113:217r–218r.
14. Informação, 266r.
15. For further discussion, see Timothy Brook, “The Early Jesuits and the Late Ming
Border: The Chinese Search for Accommodation,” in Wu Xiaoxin, ed., Encounters
and Dialogues: Changing Perspectives on Chinese-Western Exchanges from the Sixteenth
to Eighteenth Centuries (Sankt Augustin, 2005), 19–38.
16. Informação, 266r and 268r.
17. Longobardo, Appontamentos acerca da Ida do Nosso Padre Procurador a Roma,
Nanxiong, 8 May 1613, ARSI Jap-Sin 113:301r.
18. On Trigault’s voyage, see Edmond Lamalle, “La Propagande du P
. Nicolas
Trigault en faveur des Missions de Chine (1616),” AHSI 9 (1940): 49–120.
19. Longobardo to Claudio Aquaviva, Nanxiong, 28 November 1612, ARSI Jap-Sin
15-II:195r.
20. See Jurgis Elisonas, “Christianity and the Daimyo,” in John Whitney Hall
and James McClain, eds., Cambridge History of Japan, 6 vols. (Cambridge, 1988–
1999), 4:365–372.
21. Cattaneo to Claudio Aquaviva, Hangzhou, 19 July 1615, ARSI Jap-Sin 16-II:203v.
22. Niccolò Longobardo, Appontamentos acerca de Pedirse a Licentia del Rey,
Nanxiong, 19 February 1615, ARSI Jap-Sin 113:461v–462v.
23. See Erik Zürcher, “The First Anti-Christian Movement in China (Nanking,
435
Notes to Pages 59-66 F


1616–1621),” Acta Orientalia Neerlandica (Leiden, 1971), 188–195; and Ad Dudink,
“Nangong shudu (1620), Poxie ji (1640), and Western Reports on the Nanjing Persecu-
tion, 1616/1617” Monumenta Serica 48 (2000): 133–265.
24. Zürcher calls the religion of Christian literati “Confucian Monotheism.” See
Erik Zürcher, “Confucian and Christian Religiosity in Late Ming China,” Catholic
Historical Review 83.4 (October 1997): 614–653.
25. On elite anxiety in the late Ming period, see Timothy Brook, Praying for Power:
Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry Society in Late Ming China (Cambridge, Mass.,
1993), 311–321.
26. Dudink, “Nangong shudu,” 241–248.
27. Edward Kelly, “The Anti-Christian Persecution of 1616–1617 in Nanking”
(Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1971), 277.
28. Ad Dudink, “Opposition to the Introduction of Western Science and the
Nanjing Persecution (1616–1617)” in Jami et al., 191–224.
29. Dudink, “Nangong shudu,” 164–165.
30. Ibid., 241.
31. Vieira to Aleixo de Meneses, Macau, 10 December 1617, BAJA 49-V-5:217r.
32. English translation in Kelly, “Anti-Christian Persecution,” 303–307.
33. Vieira to Muzio Vitelleschi, Macau, 10 July 1617, ARSI Jap-Sin 17:84r.
34. Manuel Dias the younger to Manuel Severim de Faria, Macau, 18 November
1618, BNL Mss. 29, no. 22.
35. Francisco Vieira to [Nuno Mascarenhas?], Macau, 17 December 1617, ARSI Jap-
Sin 17:113v.
36. Francisco Furtado, AL Vice-Province 1624, Hangzhou, 17 April 1625, BAJA 49-
V-6:180r.
37. Álvaro Semedo, Relatione della Grande Monarchia della Cina (Rome, 1643), 279.
The 1643 Rome edition varies from the 1642 Madrid edition and, most likely, the
since lost Portuguese manuscript written in 1640. On the Nanjing confraternities, see
Semedo, Imperio de la China (Madrid, 1642), 301.
38. Manuel Dias the younger, AL China Mission 1618, Macau, 7 December 1619,
BAJA 49-V-5:239v.
39. Ibid., 250r–264v.
40. Standaert, Yang Tingyun, 93.
41. Manuel Dias the younger to Manuel Severim de Faria, Macau, 18 November
1618, BNL Mss. 29, no. 22.
42. Vagnone to Nuno Mascarenhas, Macau, 10 November 1619, ARSI Jap-Sin 161-
I:42r.
43. Dias the elder to Manuel Severim de Faria, Macau, 15 January 1619, BNL Mss.
29, no. 24.
44. The eighth member was Manuel de Figueiredo (1589–1663), a coadjutor who
served as procurator in Macau.
436
E Notes to Pages 67-73


45. Claudio Aquaviva created the Vice-Province in 1615 as a semi-independent ap-
pendage to the Province of Japan, with its own superiors and consultors. But his
death that year obliged Trigault to petition Muzio Vitelleschi anew. The separation
therefore dates to 1619. See Dehergne, 328.
46. On mission revenues from royal pensions, lay benefactors, and land rents, see
Alden, 298–401.
47. On internal Jesuit administration, see Adrien Demoustier, “La Distinction des
Fonctions et l’Exercice du Pouvoir selon les Règles de la Compagnie de Jésus,” in
Luce Giard, ed., Jésuites à la Renaissance: Système Éducatif et Production du Savoir
(Paris, 1995), 3–33. On the case of the Portuguese Assistancy, see Alden, 233–235 and
241–247.
48. Francisco Vieira to Nuno Mascarenhas, Macau, January 1617, ARSI Jap-Sin
17:63r–64r.
49. Matos Orders.
50. Compare Dunne, 282–302; Claudia von Collani, “Missionaries,” in Handbook,
286–354, 311.
51. Ursis to Nuno Mascarenhas, Canton, 2 December 1617, ARSI Jap-Sin 17:110r–
110Ar.
52. The 1621 text mentions building scientific instruments and revising mathemati-
cal treatises in Chinese. See Matos Orders, 223r and 231v.
53. Ibid., 228v–229v. João da Rocha’s Tianzhu shengjiao qimeng (Instruction for the
Young on the Holy Religion of the Lord of Heaven, 1619) echoed the sentiment that
Chinese Christians could gradually adapt themselves to their religion’s moral stric-
tures. See Chan, 71.
54. Matos Orders, 231v–232r.
55. Ibid., 232r.
56. Dias the elder to Jerónimo Rodrigues, Hangzhou, 3 April 1623, ARSI Jap-Sin
161-II:81v.
57. Excerpt from Manuel Dias the elder, Hangzhou, 1 March 1625, in Francisco
Furtado, AL Vice-Province 1624, Hangzhou, 17 April 1625, BAJA 49-V-6:167r.
58. The consequences of this memorial are discussed in Charles Boxer, “Portuguese
Military Expeditions in Aid of the Mings against the Manchus, 1621–1647,” T’ien-hsia
Monthly 7.1 (August 1938): 24–50.
59. António Leite, AL College of Macau 1621, Macau, 30 December 1621, ARSI Jap-
Sin 114:267r.
60. On Sun, see Huang Yi-Long, “Sun Yuanhua (1581–1632): A Christian Convert
Who Put Xu Guangqi’s Military Reform Policy into Practice,” in Jami et al., 225–259.
61. Francisco Furtado, AL Vice-Province 1621, [Jiading?], 8 September 1622, BAJA
49-V-5:331r.
62. Erik Zürcher, “Christian Social Action in Late Ming Times: Wang Zheng and
His ‘Humanitarian Society,’” in Jan de Meyer and Peter Engelfriet, eds., Linked
437
Notes to Pages 73-78 F


Faiths: Essays on Chinese Religions and Traditional Culture in Honour of Kristofer
Schipper (Leiden, 1999), 269–286, esp. 273.
63. Francisco Furtado, AL Vice-Province 1623, Hangzhou, 10 April 1624, BAJA 49-
V-6:122v.
64. Manuel Dias the younger, Triennial Catalogue, Vice-Province, 1626, ARSI Jap-
Sin 134:303r–304v.
65. Dias the elder to Jerónimo Rodrigues, Hangzhou, June 1623, ARSI Jap-Sin 161-II:83r.
66. According to the 1652 Annual Letter, Longobardo (b. 1565) died in early Septem-
ber 1654. See Manuel Jorge, AL Vice-Province 1652, Hangzhou, 7 May 1655, BAJA 49-
IV-61:205v. Compare to Dehergne, 153–154.
67. Dias the elder to Jerónimo Rodrigues, Hangzhou, June 1623, ARSI/Jap-Sin/161–
II:fol.83r.
68. On the Xi’an stele, see Paul Pelliot, L’Inscription Nestorienne de Si-Ngan-Fou, ed.
Antonino Forte (Kyoto and Paris, 1996), 5–94.
69. Francisco Furtado, AL Vice-Province 1623, Hangzhou, 10 April 1624, BAJA 49-
V-6:119v.
70. Ad Dudink and Nicolas Standaert, “Apostolate through Books,” in Handbook,
600–631, esp. 628.
71. Dias the elder to Jerónimo Rodrigues, Hangzhou, 3 April 1623, ARSI Jap-Sin
161-II:82r.
72. Anon., AL Vice-Province 1626, [n.p., 1627?], BAJA 49-V-6:329v.
73. Ibid., 331r/v. Examples in Jonathan Chaves, “Gathering Tea for God,” SWCRJ 24
(2004): 6–23.
74. On late Ming political thought and literati factions, see Willard Peterson, “Con-
fucian Learning in Late Ming Thought,” in CHC 8:708–788; and Benjamin Elman,
“Imperial Politics and Confucian Societies in Late Imperial China: The Hanlin and
Donglin Academies,” Modern China 15.4 (October 1989): 379–418.
75. Anon., AL Vice-Province 1626, [n.p., 1627?], BAJA 49-V-6:308v–314v, esp. 315r.
76. Manuel Dias [the younger?], AL Vice-Province 1625, Jiading, 1 May 1626, BAJA
49-V-6:221r.
77. Figueiredo, AL Vice-Province 1628, Hangzhou, 22 August 1629, BAJA 49-V-
6:590v.
78. Palmeiro to Muzio Vitelleschi, Macau, 20 December 1629, ARSI Jap-Sin 161-
II:109r.
79. Ibid., 109r/v.
80. Palmeiro Orders, 23r–24r.
81. Rodrigues to Claudio Aquaviva, Macau, 22 January 1616, ARSI Jap-Sin 16-
I:285v.
82. Jurgis Elisonas, “Acts, Legends, and Southern Barbarous Japanese,” in Jorge dos
Santos Alves, ed., Portugal e a China: Conferências nos Encontros de História Luso-
Chinesa (Lisbon, 2001), 15–50, esp. 28.
438
E Notes to Pages 79-86


83. Anon., Rol dos Papeis guardados na Secretaria da Vice-Provincia, Canton, 1669,
BAJA 49-IV-62:558r.
84. António de Gouvea to Domingo de Navarrete, Canton, 3 December 1669, BA
44-XII-40:164.
85. A partial autograph copy of Longobardo’s text, titled “Resposta breve sobre as
Controversias do Xamty, Tienxin, Limhoen e outros nomes e termos sinicos,” Peking,
[1624?], is in APF, Scritture Riferite nei Congressi, Indie Orientali Cina, vol. 1, 145r–
168v. On Yang’s testimony, see Standaert, Yang Tingyun, 183–203.
86. André Palmeiro to Muzio Vitelleschi, Macau, 16 January 1631, ARSI FG 730-I:
12v.
87. André Palmeiro to Muzio Vitelleschi, Macau, 18 May 1628, ARSI FG 730-
I:3r/v.
88. André Palmeiro to Muzio Vitelleschi, Macau, 16 January 1631, ARSI FG 730-
I:13r.
89. Palmeiro to Muzio Vitelleschi, Macau, 20 December 1629, ARSI Jap-Sin 161-
II:117r.
90. Muzio Vitelleschi seconded this decision in a letter dated 6 August 1632. See
Anon., Rol dos Papeis guardados na Secretaria da Vice-Provincia, BAJA 49-IV-
62:558v.
91. Palmeiro Orders, 37v–39v.
92. Dias the younger to Muzio Vitelleschi, Peking, 1 October 1634, ARSI FG 730-
I:21v.
93. Lazzaro Cattaneo, AL Vice-Province 1630, Hangzhou, 12 September 1631, BAJA
49-V-8:667r.
94. Ibid., 721v and 727v.
95. João Fróis, AL Vice-Province 1631, Hangzhou, 1632, BAJA 49-V-10:37r.
96. Semedo, Imperio de la China, 303.
97. Dunne, 226–244; and Ross, 205–206.
98. David Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500–1800 (New
York, 1999), 18.
99. John Wills Jr., “Brief Intersection: Changing Contexts and Prospects of the Chi-
nese-Christian Encounter from Matteo Ricci to Ferdinand Verbiest,” in John Witek,
ed., Ferdinand Verbiest (1623–1688): Jesuit Missionary, Scientist, Engineer, and Diplomat
(Nettetal, 1994), 383–394, esp. 394.
3. Witnesses to Armageddon
1. António de Gouvea, AL Vice-Province 1636, Hangzhou, 20 November 1637, in
Gouvea, 57–58.
2. Michel Trigault, AL Jiangzhou Residence 1639, Jiangzhou, [1639?], BAJA 49-V-
12:431r.
439
Notes to Pages 89-94 F


3. António de Gouvea, AL Vice-Province 1636, Hangzhou, 20 November 1637, in
Gouvea, 76.
4. João Monteiro, AL Vice-Province 1637, Nanchang, 16 October 1638, BAJA 49-V-
12:39v.
5. António de Gouvea, AL Vice-Province 1636, Hangzhou, 20 November 1637, in
Gouvea, 104–106 and 112–117.
6. João Monteiro, AL Vice-Province 1637, Nanchang, 16 October 1638, BAJA 49-V-
12:18v.
7. Ibid., 55r–56r.
8. A veronica is a specific type of devotional pendant bearing an image of Christ’s face.
Nominas, name medals, were glass or metal pendants bearing the name of Jesus or Mary.
9. António de Gouvea, AL Vice-Province 1636, Hangzhou, 20 November 1637, in
Gouvea, 91.
10. João Monteiro, AL Vice-Province 1637, Nanchang, 10 October 1638, BAJA 49-V-
12:40r.
11. In 1640 Michel Trigault claimed that the Jiangzhou Christians numbered eight
thousand. See Trigault, AL Jiangzhou Residence 1640, Jiangzhou, [1641?], BAJA 49-
V-12:584r.
12. Francisco Furtado to Manuel Dias the elder, Nanchang, 1 January 1638, BAJA
49-V-12:199r.
13. António de Gouvea, “Asia Extrema,” Fuzhou, 10 April 1644, BAJA 49-V-2:498.
14. João Monteiro, AL Vice-Province 1637, Nanchang, 10 October 1638, BAJA 49-V-
12:37r.
15. Francisco Furtado to Manuel Dias the elder, Nanchang, 1 January 1638, BAJA
49-V-12:205v.
16. António de Gouvea, AL Vice-Province 1636, Hangzhou, 20 November 1637, in
Gouvea, 71.
17. Gabriel de Magalhães, Partial AL Vice-Province 1640, Hangzhou, 30 August
1641, BAJA 49-V-12:489r.
18. Furtado to Manuel Dias the elder, Nanchang, 1 January 1638, BAJA 49-V-
12:202r.
19. According to Álvaro Semedo, Macau was “almost depopulated and totally fallen”
by 1650. See Semedo to Vincenzo Caraffa, Canton, 25 October 1650, ARSI Jap-Sin
161-II:353v.
20. Furtado to Muzio Vitelleschi, [Peking?], 2 February 1641, ARSI Jap-Sin 161-
II:228v.
21. On the Mendicants in Fujian, see Eugenio Menegon, “Ancestors, Virgins, and
Friars: The Localization of Christianity in Late Imperial Mindong (Fujian, China),
1632–1863” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 2002), esp. 94–164.
22. Vagnone to Nuno Mascarenhas, Macau, 10 November 1619, ARSI Jap-Sin 161-
I:42v.
440
E Notes to Pages 94-102


23. Vieira to Nuno Mascarenhas, Macau, January 1617, ARSI Jap-Sin 17:63v.
24. The rapid spread of Christianity in Fu’an district provoked reprisals from local
mandarins as early as 1634, but especially in 1637–38. See Eugenio Menegon, “Jesuits,
Franciscans, and Dominicans in Fujian: The Anti-Christian Incidents of 1637–38,” in
Tatiana Lipiello and Roman Malek, eds., “Scholar from the West”: Giulio Aleni, S.J.
(1582–1649), and the Dialogue between Christianity and China (Brescia and Nettetal,
1997), 219–262.
25. Caballero to Juan Pastor, Jinan, 24 January 1652, in SF 2:413.
26. Schall to Alexandre de Rhodes, Peking, 8 November 1637, ARSI Jap-Sin 161-
II:196r.
27. Francisco Furtado to Manuel Dias the elder, Peking, 8 [September?] 1637, BAJA
49-V-12:182v–183r.
28. See Dunne, 269–302; Ross, 118–200; J. S. Cummins, A Question of Rites: Friar
Domingo Navarrete and the Jesuits in China (Aldershot, 1993), 1–168.
29. Furtado to Manuel Dias the elder, Peking, 8 [September?] 1637, BAJA 49-V-12:182r.
30. João Monteiro, AL Vice-Province 1641, Hangzhou, 7 September 1642, BNL
Reservados 722:1r. The reference is from Wisdom 5:21, “And the whole world shall
fight with him against the unwise.”
31. Ibid., 1v.
32. Gouvea, “Asia Extrema,” BAJA 49-V-2:334.
33. João Monteiro, AL Vice-Province 1637, Nanchang, 16 October 1638, BAJA 49-V-
12:19r.
34. Gouvea, “Asia Extrema,” BA JA 49-V-2:573–579.
35. Ibid., 582–584.
36. See Erik Zürcher, “In the Yellow Tiger’s Den: Buglio and Magalhães at the Court
of Zhang Xianzhong, 1644–1647,” Monumenta Serica 50 (2002): 355–374.
37. António de Gouvea, AL Vice-Province 1646, Fuzhou, 30 August 1647, in
Gouvea, 302.
38. [Inácio da Costa?], AL Northern Residences, Vice-Province 1643, 1644, and 1645,
[Xi’an?, 1646?], BAJA 49-V-13:119r.
39. António de Gouvea, AL Southern Residences, Vice-Province 1644, Fuzhou, 16
August 1645, in Gouvea, 188.
40. Ibid., 148–149.
41. Frederic Wakeman Jr., The Great Enterprise: The Manchu Reconstruction of Impe-
rial Order in Seventeenth-Century China, 2 vols. (Berkeley, 1985), 1:18.
42. [Inácio da Costa?], AL Northern Residences, Vice-Province 1643, 1644, and 1645,
[Xi’an?, 1646?], BAJA 49-V-13:111v.
43. [Álvaro Semedo?], Relação das Guerras e Levantamentos . . . desdo Anno de
1642 athé o de 1647, Macau, 1648, BAJA 49-V-13:12v–13r.
44. See Lynn Struve, The Southern Ming, 1644–1662 (New Haven, 1984), 75–94 and
125–138.
441
Notes to Pages 103-111 F


45. Sambiasi, AL Nanjing Residence 1645, [Canton?, 1645], BAJA 49-V-13:320v–
340r.
46. Anon., Relação do Estado Prezente do Imperio da China, Macau, 1645, ARSI
Jap-Sin 123:141v.
47. Sambiasi, AL Nanjing Residence 1645, [Canton?, 1645], BAJA 49-V-13:339v.
48. Dunne, 344–347; and Albert Chan, “A European Document on the Fall of the
Ming Dynasty (1644–1649),” Monumenta Serica 35 (1981–1983): 75–109.
49. Anon., Relação das couzas que aconteçerão e aconteçem na pessoa do Padre
Francisco Sambiasi no Reino da China e em Macau, [Macau?, 1646?], ARSI Jap-Sin
123:152v.
50. Manuel Jorge, AL Vice-Province 1651, [Hangzhou, 1652?], BAJA 49-IV-61:82r–
83v.
51. António de Gouvea, AL Vice-Province 1646, Fuzhou, 30 August 1647, in
Gouvea, 290.
52. Anon., Relação do Estado Prezente do Imperio da China, ARSI Jap-Sin 123:141v.
53. Triennial Catalogue, Vice-Province 1645, ARSI Jap-Sin 134:325r–326v.
54. Semedo to Vincenzo Carraffa, Canton, 25 October 1650, ARSI Jap-Sin 161-
II:353r.
55. Cunha to Francisco Furtado, Yanping, 25 January 1653, BNL Reservados
722:46v.
56. Feliciano Pacheco, AL Central Residences, Vice-Province 1660, Huai’an, 19 July
1661, BAJA 49-V-14:718v–719r.
57. Gabriel de Magalhães, AL Vice-Province 1640, Hangzhou, 30 August 1641, BAJA
49-V-12:511v.
58. Brancati, AL Shanghai Residence 1647, Shanghai, [1647?], BAJA 49-V-13:459r.
59. Brancati, AL Shanghai Residence 1648, Shanghai, [1648?], BAJA 49-V-13:479r;
and Brancati to Francisco Furtado, Shanghai, [1653?], BA 50-V-38:97r.
60. Cunha to Francisco Furtado, Yanping, 25 January 1653, BNL Reservados 722:43r
and 50v–51v. Compare Cummins, Question of Rites, 110.
61. Andre Ferrão, AL Vice-Province 1656, Macau, 29 January 1659, BAJA 49-V-
14:68v–69r.
62. Feliciano Pacheco, AL Central Residences, Vice-Province 1660, Huai’an, 19 July
1661, BAJA 49-V-14:708v.
63. Gabriel de Magalhães, AL Northern Residences, Vice-Province 1658, Peking, 20
September 1659, BAJA 49-V-14:237v.
64. André Ferrão, AL Vice-Province 1656, Macau, 29 January 1659, BAJA 49-V-
14:64r.
65. Manuel Jorge, AL Vice-Province 1657, Nanjing, 12 May 1658, BAJA 49-V-
14:152v–154r.
66. Gabriel de Magalhães, AL Northern Residences, Vice-Province 1660, Peking, 20
July 1662, BAJA 49-V-14:692r.
442
E Notes to Pages 111-118


67. Ibid., 697r.
68. Triennial Catalogue, Vice-Province 1651, ARSI Jap-Sin 134:338r–339r.
69. Faure, AL Ganzhou Residence 1658, 1659, and 1660, Ganzhou, n.d, BAJA 49-V-
14:648r.
70. Motel, AL Wuchang Residence 1661 and 1662, Wuchang, [1662?], BAJA 49-V-
15:138r.
71. Magalhães, AL Northern Residences, Vice-Province 1658, Peking, 20 September
1659, BAJA 49-V-14:237v.
72. Luís da Gama, Triennial Catalogue, Vice-Province 1663, ARSI Jap-Sin 134:345r–
346r.
73. Compare David Mungello, The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1500–1800
(New York, 1999), 22.
4. The Problem of Success
1. Manuel Jorge, Breve Relação. . . . de como foy perseguida a Ley de Deus na
China e seos pregadores desterrados nestes proximos annos de 1664, 1665, Canton, 28
January 1667, BAJA 49-V-15:197v, 206r, and 211r.
2. On Magalhães’s denunciations of Schall, see Antonella Romano, “Observer,
Vénérer, Servir: Une Polemique Jésuite autour du Tribunal des Mathématiques à
Pékin,” Annales: Histoire, Sciences Sociales 59.4 (July–August 2004): 729–756.
3. Francesco Brancati to Vincenzo Caraffa, Shanghai, 27 September 1650, ARSI
Jap-Sin 142:125r–128v.
4. Ad Dudink, “Opponents,” in Handbook, 503–533, 513–514.
5. On the Calendar Case, see Harriet Zurndorfer, “‘One Adam having driven us
out of paradise, Another has driven us out of China’: Yang Kuang-hsien’s Challenge of
Adam Schall von Bell,” in Leonard Blussé and Harriet T. Zurndorfer, eds., Conflict
and Accommodation in Early Modern East Asia (Leiden, 1993), 141–168.
6. Jorge, Breve Relação,BAJA 49-V-15:427r–431r.
7. Ibid., 212v–214r.
8. Zurndorfer, “‘One Adam,’” 164.
9. Domingo Fernández de Navarrete, Tratados Historicos, Politicos, Ethicos, y
Religiosos de la Monarchia de China (Madrid, 1676), 350.
10. Jorge, Breve Relação, BAJA 49-V-15:432v–435r.
11. François de Rougemont, Relaçam do Estado Politico e Espiritual do Imperio da
China, pellos annos de 1659 até o de 1666 (Lisbon, 1672), 193.
12. Navarrete, Tratados, 350.
13. Andrea Lubelli, Breve Relação da Persiguição Geral, Canton, [26 December
1666?], BAJA 49-V-15:287v.
14. Navarrete, Tratados, 351.
15. Rougemont, Relaçam do Estado Politico, 193–194.
443
Notes to Pages 118-130 F


16. Pacheco, Praxes quadam discussae in pleno eotus 25 patrum statutae et decreta
ad servandum inter nos in Sinica Missione uniformitatem, Canton, [January 1668?],
ARSI Jap-Sin 162:253r–255v.
17. Da Gama to Giovanni Paolo Oliva, Macau, 10 December 1668, ARSI Jap-Sin
162:239r.
18. Santa Maria (possibly thanks to Jean Valat) found Longobardo’s “Resposta
breve” at the Jesuits’ Shandong residence in the early 1660s. Two-thirds of the treatise
had been burned, but the introduction—a discussion of Chinese cosmology and
Longobardo’s interviews with literati on the disputed terms—was intact. Santa Maria
sent a Latin translation to the cardinals of the Propaganda Fide, the Roman ecclesias-
tical organ responsible for missionary affairs. This text was printed in several lan-
guages in Europe by the Society’s rivals—yet the volumes lacked Longobardo’s caveats
alerting the reader that its arguments could be correctly understood only in the con-
text of the other treatises by João Rodrigues, Sabatino de Ursis, Alfonso Vagone, and
Diego de Pantoja. For Santa Maria’s letter, see Antonio de Santa Maria to Cardinals of
the Propaganda Fide, [Jinan?], 29 March 1662, APF Scritture Riferite nei Congressi,
Indie Orientali Cina, 1:23r/v.
19. In 1669 the papacy further confused the matter when it reaffirmed the two con-
flicting decrees on the rites (1645 and 1656). On the Canton conference, see J. S.
Cummins, A Question of Rites: Friar Domingo Navarrete and the Jesuits in China
(Aldershot, 1993), 413–424.
20. Hubert Verhaeren, trans. and ed., “Les Ordonnonces de la Sainte Eglise,”
Monumenta Serica 4 (1939–1940): 451–477.
21. Da Gama to Giovanni Paolo Oliva, Macau, 25 October 1667, ARSI Jap-Sin
162:196v.
22. Lubelli, Breve Relação da Persiguição Geral, BAJA 49-V-15:287v.
23. Jorge, Breve Relação, 435r.
24. Luís da Gama to Giovanni Paolo Oliva, Macau, 25 October 1667, ARSI Jap-Sin
162:196v.
25. Bartholomeu de Espinoza to Giovanni Paolo Oliva, Macau, 9 December 1670,
in Rougemont, Relaçam do Estado Politico, 228.
26. Noël Golvers, François de Rougemont, SJ, Missionary in Ch’ang-shu (Chiang-Nan):
A Study of the Account Book (1674–1676) and the Elogium (Leuven, 1999), 27–28.
27. Translation in H. Bosmans, ed., “Les Lettres Annuelles de la Vice-Province de la
Compagnie de Jésus en Chine, Année 1669 par Adrien Grelon,” Revue Trimestrielle
pour l’Étude des Antiquités de la Flandre 62 (1912): 15–61, 58–61.
28. Monica Esposito, “Qing Daoism,” in Livia Kohn, ed., Daoism Handbook
(Leiden, 2001), 623–658, 625.
29. Gabriel de Magalhães to João Cardoso, Peking, 6 September 1675, BAJA 49-IV-
16:159r–160v. The date of the inscription has caused confusion. Magalhães tells that
Kangxi visited on July 12, 1675, but wrote “the Chinese year sin hay” on the text that
444
E Notes to Pages 133-137


he sent to the Jesuits the next day. The missionary claimed that Kangxi had written
the inscription “four years prior” (in 1671) but delayed giving it to them.
30. Tomé Pereira, Relação Breve da Morte e Enterramento do Padre Gabriel de
Magalhães, Peking, 25 June 1677, BAJA 49-V-17:565r–568v.
31. Triennial Catalogue, Vice-Province 1678, 1680, and 1688, ARSI Jap-Sin 134:362r–
371v.
32. See François de Rougemont’s spiritual diary from 1674 to 1676, in Golvers,
François de Rougemont, esp. 186–204.
33. Philippe Couplet, Historia de una Gran Señora Christiana de la China, llamada
Doña Candida Hiù (Madrid, 1691), 88–90.
34. Ibid., 85, 146, and 36.
35. Ibid., 44, 41, 86, and 138.
36. Martini, Partial AL Hangzhou Residence 1648, Hangzhou, [1648?], BAJA 49-V-
13:609r.
37. [Adrien Grelon?], Rol das Christandades que tenho a minha conta, [Ganzhou?,
1681?], ARSI Jap-Sin 112:39r.
38. Nicolas Standaert, “Chinese Christians,” in Handbook, 380–403, 382.
39. Juan Antonio de Arnedo, AL Vice-Province 1685–1690, Ganzhou, 30 November
1691, ARSI Jap-Sin 117:238r.
40. Soares to Antoine Thomas, Jiangzhou, 29 April 1687, BAJA 49-V-20:69v.
41. Juan Antonio de Arnedo, AL Vice-Province 1685–1690, Ganzhou, 30 September
1691, BAJA 49-V-19:669v.
42. In 1617 twelve Jesuits signed a report asserting that the time was not ripe for or-
daining Chinese priests. Niccolò Longobardo, Informação dos Irmãos Chinenses
Naturaes de Macau, Hangzhou, 4 October 1617, ARSI Jap-Sin 17:91r–92v.
43. The most spectacular case of apostasy among Japanese Jesuits was Fabian Fucan
(1565?–1621?), a master apologist who wrote a treatise called “Deus Destroyed” after
turning against his former confreres. See George Elison, Deus Destroyed: The Image of
Christianity in Early Modern Japan (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 142–184 and 257–291.
44. Dunne, 167; Alden, 262–266.
45. Nicolas Standaert and John Witek, “Chinese Clergy,” in Handbook, 462–470,
esp. 462.
46. Alden, 262–263.
47. This was the reason Manuel de Sequeira (1633–1673), the first Chinese Jesuit, left
Macau for Europe in 1645. Sequeira joined the order in Rome and was ordained after
studying theology at Coimbra. He returned to China in 1668 only to find his col-
leagues detained in Canton. A biography is Francis Rouleau, “The First Chinese
Priest of the Society of Jesus: Emmanuel de Siqueira, 1633–1673 (Cheng Ma-no, Wei-
hsin),” AHSI 28 (1959): 3–50.
48. Buglio to Filippo de Marini, Peking, 16 May 1680, BAJA 49-V-17: 316r.
49. On the debates over the Chinese liturgy in Europe and China, see François
445
Notes to Pages 138-145 F


Bontinck, La Lutte autour de la Liturgie Chinoise aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Leuven
and Paris, 1962), 21–159.
50. Lodovico Buglio, Ferdinand Verbiest, and Gabriel de Magalhães, Alguns Pontos
pella Conservaçam e Augmento deste Christandade, Peking, [1668?], ARSI Jap-Sin
124:112v.
51. Motel to Sebastião de Almeida, Wuchang, 1678, ARSI Jap-Sin 124:111Br.
52. Ibid., 111Br/v.
53. Jacques le Faure and Adrien Grelon complained that they were maltreated by
Feliciano Pacheco, António de Gouvea, and Luís da Gama. Le Faure asserted that his
countrymen were “born free, and by their nature incapable of suffering the yoke of
foreign domination.” Fearing that the Canton exile would lead to expulsion from
China, he added that French Jesuits should go to mission territories administered by
France rather than Portugal. Grelon was more direct: he asked for reassignment to
Syria or Madagascar if the China mission was extinguished. He consented to remain
in the Vice-Province only if he could return to the isolation of his mission station. See
Le Faure to Claude Boucher, Canton, 1 November 1668, ARSI FG 730-I:79r–80v;
and Adrien Grelon to Claude Boucher, Canton, 1 November 1668, ARSI FG 730-
I:81r–82v.
54. Navarrete, Tratados, 361. Navarrete numbers Humbert Augery among these
“French Fathers.”
55. Brancati to Giovanni Paolo Oliva, Canton, 23 October 1668, ARSI Jap-Sin
162:219v.
56. Motel to Sebastião de Almeida, Wuchang, 1678, ARSI Jap-Sin 124:111r/v. Motel
lists the following priests as those who objected to the idea: Manuel Dias the younger,
Álvaro Semedo, Simão da Cunha, Johann Adam Schall, Inácio da Costa, Francesco
Brancati, Francesco Ferrari (1609–1671), Pietro Canevari, and António de Gouvea.
Motel himself arrived in China at the same time as the Moderns.
57. Buglio, Verbiest, and Magalhães, Alguns Pontos pella Conservaçam e Augmento
deste Christandade, ARSI Jap-Sin 124:112r/v.
58. Intorcetta, Memorial . . . ao Padre João Cardoso, Provincial de Japão, Macau, 12
September 1674, ARSI Jap-Sin 23:365r.
59. Motel to Sebastião de Almeida, Wuchang, 1678, ARSI Jap-Sin 124:111r.
60. Pereira to Sebastião de Almeida, Peking, 3 January 1678, ARSI Jap-Sin 124:116r.
61. Verbiest to Sebastião de Almeida, Peking, 8 January 1678, ARSI Jap-Sin
124:120r.
62. Buglio to Sebastião de Almeida, Peking, 11 January 1678, ARSI Jap-Sin 124:117r.
63. Sebastião de Almeida, with concern, forwarded a note from Couplet agreeing to
the proposal. See Philippe Couplet to Sebastião de Almeida, [Songjiang?], 1678, ARSI
Jap-Sin 124:114v.
64. Valat to Sebastião de Almeida, Jin’an, 15 January 1678, ARSI Jap-Sin 124:118r.
65. Wan inherited the rank of jiansheng, a status purchased in order to enable its
446
E Notes to Pages 145-151


holder to bypass local examinations and present himself directly for provincial ones,
along with other legal and tax exemptions. See Prospero Intorcetta to Francesco
Saverio Filippucci, Hangzhou, 16 January 1689, BAJA 49-IV-63:435v.
66. Gabiani to Francesco Saverio Filippucci, Peking, 14 May 1688, BAJA 49-IV-
63:306v.
67. Prospero Intorcetta to Francesco Saverio Filippucci, Hangzhou, 27 September
1688, BAJA 49-V-20:91v–92r.
68. José Monteiro to António de Rego, Fuzhou, 12 February 1690, ARSI Jap-Sin 199-
I:65v.
69. Giandomenico Gabiani to Francesco Saverio Filippucci, Nanjing, 19 February
1690, BAJA 49-IV-64:98v; Gabiani to Francesco Saverio Filippucci, Nanjing, 6 April
1690, BAJA 49-IV-64:107r/v.
70. Pereira to Simão Rodrigues, Peking, 5 December 1688, BAJA 49-IV-63:563r.
71. Intorcetta to Francesco Saverio Filippucci, Hangzhou, 5 October 1689, BAJA 49-
IV-63:540r.
72. Couplet’s staged exoticism was not universally well received. Vice-Provincial
Gabiani disapproved of his excessive baggage and Chinese assistants. António dos
Reys, the Portuguese Assistant, wrote to Visitor Joseph Tissanier in Macau that future
procurators should not bring “Indians or Chinese as companions nor so many cases
of things, all of which were Father Couplet’s fancy.” See Theodore N. Foss, “The
European Sojourn of Philippe Couplet and Michael Shen Fuzong, 1683–1692,” in
Jerome Heyndrickx, ed., Philippe Couplet, S.J. (1623–1693): The Man Who Brought
China to Europe (Nettetal, 1990), 121–142, esp. 126–127; and Dos Reys to Tissanier,
Rome, 22 January 1686, BAJA 49-V-19:871r/v.
73. These editions were printed at Lyon (1616), Lille (1617), Paris (1618), Augsburg
(1617), Seville (1621), Naples (1622), and London (1626).
74. Semedo’s text appeared at Rome (1643 and 1653), Paris (1645), Lyon (1667), and
London (1655).
75. For instance, Martini claimed 150,000 Chinese Christians in 1651, though other
estimates from over a decade later claimed only 105,000. See Martino Martini, Brevis
Relatio de Numero et Qualitate Christianorum apud Sinas (Rome, 1654), 5.
76. A modified version of this text was reprinted as Historica Relatio de Ortu et
Progressu Fidei Orthodoxae in Regno Chinensi per Missionarios Societatis Jesu
(Regensburg, 1672).
77. A Latin version of this text appeared at Rome in 1672.
78. Gabriel de Magalhães, preface to Nouvelle Relation de la Chine, trans. Barnout
(Paris, 1690).
79. On this book’s publication, see Cummins, Question of Rites, 193–215.
80. Marini to Manuel Fernandes, Macau, 21 November 1680, BAJA 49-V-17:41r.
81. Marini to Manuel Fernandes, Macau, 3 December 1681, BAJA 49-V-17:45r.
82. See Anastase van den Wyngaert, “Mgr. Fr. Pallu et Mgr. Bernardin della Chiesa:
447
Notes to Pages 151-157 F


Le Serment de Fidelité aux Vicaires Apostoliques 1680–1688,” Archivum Franciscanum
Historicum 31 (1938): 17–47.
83. Andrea Lubelli to Alessandro Cicero, Macau, [1681?], BAJA 49-V-19:34v.
84. Noël Golvers, “Lettre du P
. Ferdinand Verbiest, vice-provincial de la mission de
Chine, à ses confrères de la Société en Europe, le 15 août 1678, de la résidence
impériale de Beijing,” Courrier Verbiest 5 (December 1993): 5–9.
85. Intorcetta to António de Rego, Hangzhou, 25 May 1688, ARSI Jap-Sin 164:58v.
86. On the French Jesuits’ relations with Kangxi, see John W. Witek, Controversial
Ideas in China and Europe: A Biography of Jean-François Fouquet, SJ (1665–1741)
(Rome, 1982), 58–72.
87. Prospero Intorcetta to Simão Martins, Hangzhou, 31 October 1687, BAJA 49-IV-
63:92v.
88. Intorcetta to Francesco Saverio Filippucci, Hangzhou, 21 February 1688, BAJA
49-IV-63:146r/v.
89. Fontaney to Ferdinand Verbiest, Ningbo, 13 August 1687, BAJA 49-IV-63:102r.
90. Filippucci to Prospero Intorcetta, Canton, 28 April 1688, BAJA 49-IV-63: 297r.
Compare Witek’s irenic assessment of Filippucci in his Controversial Ideas, 52.
91. Fontaney to Francesco Saverio Filippucci, Nanjing, 9 August 1688, BAJA 49-IV-
63:211r/v.
92. See Dunne, 8–15; Ross, 205–206; Alden, 157; and David Mungello, “A Confu-
cian Echo of Western Humanist Culture in Seventeenth Century China,” in Masini,
279–292, 282.
93. Filippucci to Tomé Pereira, Canton, 30 March 1688, BAJA 49-V-20:101r.
94. Fontaney, Extrait des Lettres, Canton, 26 October 1690, ARSI Jap-Sin 132:62r.
95. Filippucci to Sebastião de Magalhães, Macau, 19 October 1690, BAJA 49-IV-
64:212r.
96. Manuel Ferreira to Tirso González, Lisbon, 27 March 1690, ARSI Jap-Sin 164:234v.
97. Brief Catalogue, Vice-Province 1691, ARSI Jap-Sin 134:375r.
5. Between Tolerance and the Intolerable
1. Emanuele Laurifice to Tirso González, Songjiang, 11 November 1691, ARSI Jap-
Sin 165:121v. For further discussion, see David Mungello, The Forgotten Christians of
Hangzhou (Honolulu, 1994), 59–66.
2. [Francisco Pinto?], AL Hangzhou Residence 1691–1693, Hangzhou, [1693?],
BAJA 49-V-22:178v.
3. See Joseph Sebes, The Jesuits and the Sino-Russian Treaty of Nerchinsk (1689): The
Diary of Thomas Pereira (Rome, 1962).
4. Pereira’s memorials and the corresponding edicts are in Lo-Shu Fu, ed., A Docu-
mentary Chronicle of Sino-Western Relations (1644–1820), 2 vols. (Tucson, Ariz., 1966),
1:104–106.
448
E Notes to Pages 157-167


5. Erik Zürcher, “Emperors,” in Handbook, 492–502, esp. 497.
6. Fu, Documentary Chronicle, 1:105–106.
7. Ad Dudink, “Opponents,” in Handbook, 503–533, esp. 516.
8. [Francisco Pinto?], AL Hangzhou Residence 1691–1693, Hangzhou, [1693?],
BAJA 49-V-22:179v.
9. Anon., AL College of Macau and Canton Residences 1692, Macau, [1693?],
BAJA 49-V-22:103r.
10. [Francisco Pinto?], AL Hangzhou Residence 1691–1693, Hangzhou, [1693?],
BAJA 49-V-22:178v–180r.
11. José Soares translated the edicts into Latin at Peking. Spanish, French, and Ital-
ian editions followed: La Liberdad de la Ley de Dios en el Imperio de la China, trans.
Juan de Espinola (Valencia, 1696); Charles Le Gobien, Histoire de l’Édit de la Chine,
en faveur de la Religion Chrestienne (Paris, 1696); and Istoria dell’Editto dell’Imperatore
della Cina in favore della Religione Cristiana (Turin, 1699).
12. Anon., AL College of Macau and Canton Residences 1692, Macau, [1693?],
BAJA 49-V-22:103r–104r.
13. Brief Catalogue, Vice-Province 1692, ARSI Jap-Sin 134:375; Triennial Catalogue,
Vice-Province 1699, ARSI Jap-Sin 134:385r–386r.
14. José Soares, Draft AL Vice-Province 1697, Peking, 30 July 1697, BAJA 49-V-
21:78r/v.
15. Pieter Van Hamme, AL Wuchang Residence 1692, Wuchang, [1693?], BAJA 49-
V-22:165v–166r.
16. José Soares, Partial AL Vice-Province July 1694–July 1697, Peking, 30 July 1697,
BAJA 49-V-22:636r.
17. Tomé Pereira to Tirso González, Peking, 30 April 1693, ARSI Jap-Sin 165:394v;
Simão Rodrigues, AL Changshu Residence 1692, Changshu, [1692?], BAJA 49-V-
22:167r.
18. [Juan Antonio de Arnedo?], AL Nanchang Residence 1692, Nanchang, [1693?],
BAJA 49-V-22:170v; José Soares, Partial AL Vice-Province July 1694–July 1697, Pe-
king, 30 July 1697, BAJA 49-V-22:644v.
19. José Soares, Partial AL Vice-Province July 1694–July 1697, Peking, 30 July 1697,
BAJA 49-V-22:642r; Soares to Tirso González, Peking, 28 September 1694, ARSI Jap-
Sin 166:29r; José Monteiro to Tirso González, Fuzhou, 15 September 1695, ARSI Jap-
Sin 166:80r.
20. José Soares, Partial AL Vice-Province July 1694–July 1697, Peking, 30 July 1697,
BAJA 49-V-22:634r.
21. Ibid., 633r/v.
22. [Francisco Simões], Breve Relação das Missoens de . . . Pecheli no principio deste
anno de 1693, [Zhending?, March?] 1693, BAJA 49-V-22:165v.
23. Pieter Van Hamme, AL Wuchang Residence 1692, Wuchang, [1693?], BAJA 49-
V-22:166r.
449
Notes to Pages 167-173 F


24. José Soares, Partial AL Vice-Province July 1694–July 1697, Peking, 30 July 1697,
BAJA 49-V-22:636v.
25. [Francisco Pinto?], AL Hangzhou Residence 1691–1693, Hangzhou, [1693?],
BAJA 49-V-22:177v.
26. Francisco Nogueira, Ordens para as Residencias da China, Macau, [1694?],
BAJA 49-V-23:338r. This order was reiterated in a 1704 circular letter by Vice-Provin-
cial Antoine Thomas. See Fortunato Margiotti, Il Cattolicismo nello Shansi dalle
origini al 1738 (Rome, 1958), 309.
27. Triennial Catalogue, Vice-Province 1699, ARSI Jap-Sin 134: 385r–386r; José
Monteiro, Triennial Catalogue, Vice-Province 1702, ARSI Jap-Sin 134:397r–400r.
28. Antoine Thomas, Triennial Catalogue, Vice-Province 1703, Peking, 25 Septem-
ber 1703, ARSI Jap-Sin 134:408Fv.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid., 408Er.
31. Ibid., 408Fv.
32. José Monteiro, Reddius Collegiorum et Residentiarum Vice Provinciae Sinensis
Societatis Iesu, [Ganzhou?], 1699, ARSI FG 722, bundle 16.
33. [Carlo Turcotti?], Breve Relação da Missão da China até o anno de 1700, [Can-
ton?], 1700, BAJA 49-V-23:504r/v.
34. Soares to José Monteiro, Peking, 8 January 1705, BAJA 49-V-24:524r.
35. [Turcotti?], Breve Relação da Missão da China até o anno de 1700, BAJA 49-V-
23:504v.
36. Pereira to Tirso González, Peking, 30 August 1693, ARSI Jap-Sin 165:394r.
37. Brief Catalogue, Vice-Province (including non-Jesuit missionaries) 1701, ARSI
Jap-Sin 134:392Ar–392Cv.
38. Anon., Relação Sincera e Verdadeira do que fez, pertendeo, e ocazionou na
Missão da China, e em Macao o Patriarca de Antioquia Carlo Thomaz Mailard de
Tournon, Macau, [early 1708?], BAJA 49-V-25:718r.
39. Brief Catalogue, Vice-Province (including non-Jesuit missionaries) 1701, ARSI
Jap-Sin 134:392Ar–392Cv.
40. Pereira to Tirso González, Peking, 30 August 1693, ARSI Jap-Sin 165:394v.
41. José Soares, Partial AL Vice-Province July 1694–July 1697, Peking, 30 July 1697,
BAJA 49-V-22:641v.
42. Francisco Nogueira to [Tirso González?], Macau?, 20 November 1695, AHU
Macau Series, box 2:27.
43. Pereira to Tirso González, Peking, 10 August 1694, ARSI Jap-Sin 166:14r.
44. Cicero to Jean-Baptiste Maldonado, [Peking?], 11 June 1695, ARSI Jap-Sin
166:64r.
45. Louis Le Comte, Nouveaux Memoires sur l’État Présent de la Chine, 2 vols. (Paris,
1699, 1701), 2:175–176.
46. French Mission Catalogue, [after 1706], ARSI Jap-Sin 134:390r.
450
E Notes to Pages 173-183


47. Fontaney to Jean-Joseph Guibert, Canton, 28 September 1701, ARSI Jap-Sin
167:160r–161r. On the French Jesuits’ provincial missions, see John Witek, Controver-
sial Ideas in China and Europe: A Biography of Jean-François Fouquet, SJ (1665–1741)
(Rome, 1982), 72–145, esp. 101–125.
48. Grimaldi to Portuguese Assistant, Peking, 15 October 1700, BAJA 49-V-23:534r–
535r.
49. Anon., Noticias de Pekim do anno de 1703, [Peking?, 1703?], BAJA 49-V-
24:267v.
50. Anon., Novas de Pekim desde Novembro de 1701 até os 18 de Fevreiro de 1702,
Peking, [18 February 1702?], ARSI Jap-Sin 128:118r.
51. Gozani to José Monteiro, Fuzhou, 20 June 1701, BAJA 49-V-25:16r.
52. For more on this European polemical literature, see René Étiemble, L’Europe
Chinoise, 2 vols. (Paris, 1988), 241–369; and Paul Rule, K’ung-tzu or Confucius? The Je-
suit Interpretation of Confucianism (Sydney, 1986), 70–149.
53. Cicero to Pedro II, Nanjing, 26 September 1702, AHU Macau Series, box 2:32.
54. On the Tournon legation, see Francis Rouleau, “Maillard de Tournon, Papal Le-
gate at the Court of Peking: The First Imperial Audience (31 December 1705),” AHSI
31 (1962): 264–323; and Antonio Sisto Rosso, Apostolic Legations to China in the Eigh-
teenth Century (South Pasadena, Calif., 1948), 149–186.
55. Anon., Tragica Relação dos Successos mais notaveis que acontecerão nas
Missoens da China e na cidade de Macao desdo anno de 1706 athé 1707, [Macau?,
1707?], BAJA 49-V-25:173v.
56. Rouleau, “Tournon,” 296.
57. Rosso, Apostolic Legations, 136–146; Zürcher, “Emperors,” in Handbook, 498.
58. On the aftermath of Tournon’s audiences, see Edward Malatesta, “A Fatal
Clash of Wills: The Condemnation of the Chinese Rites by the Papal Legate Carlo
Tommaso Maillard de Tournon,” in David Mungello, ed., The Chinese Rites Contro-
versy: Its History and Meaning (Nettetal, 1994), 211–246.
59. [José Monteiro?], Relação do que se tem passado nesta missão da China desde
Dezembro de 1706 até o Prezente, Canton, 1 December 1707, BAJA 49-V-25:197v.
60. On Tournon in Macau, see Rouleau, “Tournon,” 265–267.
61. [Monteiro?], Relação do que se tem passado nesta missão da China, BAJA 49-V-
25:202r–203r.
62. Anon., Catalogo dos Missionarios que foram lançados da China nos annos 1706,
1707, e 1708 e dos que forão nella athé Dezembro de 1708, [Canton?, December
1708?], BAJA 49-V-25:205v; José Monteiro, Catalogue of Missionaries in China, Can-
ton, December 1708, ARSI FG 722, bundle 5.
63. Dudink, “Opponents,” 517–518.
64. Anon., Relação Sincera e Verdadeira, BAJA 49-V-25:765r.
65. Dudink, “Opponents,” 518.
66. Letter from José Ramón Arxó, Rome, 30 November 1709, BAJA 49-V-26:410r/v.
451
Notes to Pages 183-192 F


67. Fonseca to [José Monteiro], Lisbon, 15 March 1714, BAJA 49-V-27:453v.
68. Amaral to Manuel Saraiva, Goa, 23 November 1709, ARSI Goa 9-II:446r–448v.
69. Bernardino della Chiesa to Juan Fernández Serrano, Linqing, 10 May 1720, in SF
5:757–771. For more on this theme, see Lars Peter Laamann, “Memories of Faith: The
‘Christian Sutras’ of Eighteenth-Century China,” in R. N. Swanson, ed., The Church
and the Book (Woodbridge, England, 2004), 279–302.
70. Domingos Pinheiro, Compendio da Historia de como Varias Pessoas da Familia
Imperial Tartaro Sinica abraçaram a Religiam Christam, Peking, [September?] 1724,
BNL Reservados 32:7r. On the Sunu clan, see John Witek, “Manchu Christians,” in
Handbook, 445–447; and Pasquale D’Elia, Il Lontano Confino e la Tragica Morte del P
.
João Mourão S.I., Missionario in Cina (1681–1726), (Lisbon, 1963), 51–181.
71. [José Soares?], Declarão-se, e Provão-se livres de toda a Censura as Inscrições,
que o Imperador da China deo em 2 de Mayo de 1711 à Nova Igreja do Collegio da
Companhia de Jesus em Pekim, Peking, [May?] 1711, BAJA 49-V-27:86r–96v.
72. Pastoral letter from Agostinho da Anunciação, Goa, 29 April 1710, BAJA 49-V-
26:565r.
73. ARSI holds files organized by year (starting in 1716) containing sworn oaths
signed by each China missionary. See ARSI FG 722, bundle 15.
74. Giampaolo Gozani to José Monteiro, Peking, 9 January 1714, BAJA 49-V-
27:435v–436r.
75. Bernardino della Chiesa to Giampaolo Gozani, Linqing, 18 January 1714, in SF
5:591–593.
76. Claudia von Collani, “Figurism,” in Handbook, 668–679, esp. 671.
77. Dudink, “Opponents,” 518–519.
78. Nicolas Standaert, “Creation of Chinese Communities,” in Handbook, 534–575,
esp. 564.
79. Dudink, “Opponents,” 521.
80. Zürcher, “Emperors,” 499.
81. José Soares, Continuaçam dos Successos na Missão da China, Peking, 30 Sep-
tember 1726, BNL Reservados 8123:6v.
82. Letter from Joseph de Moyriac de Mailla, Peking, 16 October 1724, in Jean-
Baptiste du Halde, ed., Lettres Édifiantes et Curieuses écrites des Missions Étrangères, 34
vols. (Paris, 1702–1776), 17:245–247 and 282–284.
83. Anon., Relaçam e Substancia da Pratica que o Emperador Tartaro Sinico
Yumchim teve ao 1 de Julho de 1724 com tres padres da Companhia de Jesus, Peking,
[1724?], AN/TT Mss. Liv. 1096:1r–2v.
84. Soares, Continuaçam dos Successos na Missão da China, BNL Reservados
8123:7r.
85. Roman Hinderer, AL Hangzhou College 1726, Hangzhou, 3 September 1726;
Domingos de Brito, AL Songjiang Residence 1726, Songjiang, 3 September 1726,
BNL Reservados 8123:8r/v.
452
E Notes to Pages 193-201


86. Soares, Continuaçam dos Successos na Missão da China, BNL Reservados
8123:2r.
87. Ibid., 8r.
88. Thomas, Triennial Catalogue, Vice-Province 1703, Peking, 25 September 1703,
ARSI Jap-Sin 134:408Cv.
89. Ibid., 408Fv; Soares, Continuaçam dos Successos na Missão da China, BNL
Reservados 8123:7r.
90. Gozani to João V, Macau, 21 November 1725, BAJA 49-V-28:156r.
91. Soares, Continuaçam dos Successos na Missão da China, BNL Reservados 8123:2r.
6. In the Apostles’ Classroom
1. André Gomes, Relaçam Geral das Festas . . . na canonização dos gloriosos Sancto
Ignacio de Loyola . . . & S. Francisco Xavier . . . no anno de 1622 (Lisbon, 1623), 77r–78v
and 83r–84v.
2. Brief Catalogue, Province of Portugal 1622, ARSI Lus 39:125v.
3. Nicolas Standaert, “The Jesuit Presence in China (1580–1773): A Statistical Ap-
proach,” SWCRJ 12 (1991): 4–17, esp. 4–5.
4. António Barradas, Triennial Catalogue, Province of Portugal 1665, ARSI Lus
45:315v–319r.
5. On the Ratio Studiorum, with a French translation, see Ratio Studiorum.
6. Balthasar Teles, Chronica da Companhia de Iesu da Provincia de Portugal, 2 vols.
(Lisbon, 1647), 2:24.
7. On Jesuit education, see John O’Malley, The First Jesuits (Cambridge, Mass.,
1993), 200–242; and Adrien Demoustier, “Les Jésuites et l’enseignement à la fin du
XVIe Siècle,” in Ratio Studiorum, 12–28.
8. Feliciano Pacheco, Triennial Catalogue, Vice-Province 1666, ARSI Jap-Sin
134:348r–349r.
9. The Vice-Province’s catalogues are in ARSI Jap-Sin 134:300r–414r. Over the
course of the seventeenth century, the novices’ average age increased, meaning that
fewer finished their humanities studies as Jesuits.
10. Informação, 267v.
11. Longobardo, Appontamentos a cerca da Ida do nosso Padre Procurador a Roma,
Nanxiong, 8 May 1613, ARSI Jap-Sin 113:303r.
12. Verbiest to Ignace Malgaert, Genoa, February 1656, in H. Josson and L. Willaert,
eds., Correspondance de Ferdinand Verbiest, SJ, Directeur de l’Observatoire de Pékin
(Brussels, 1938), 9.
13. Soares to Filippucci, Peking, 6 August 1688, BAJA 49-IV-63:207v–208r.
14. Caballero to Antonio de San Gregorio, Anhai, 15 October 1649, in SF 2:374.
15. Anon., Livro Segundo das Entradas deste Novicado de Évora, 1596–1619,
BPADE Mss. CXXX/1–1:47v. The questions posed to novices are in the order’s Gen-
453
Notes to Pages 201-218 F


eral Examen. See Ignatius Loyola, Constitutions of the Society of Jesus, trans. and ed.
George Ganss (St. Louis, 1970), 85–91. Further questions for scholastics are on 110–112
and 115–117.
16. Teles, Chronica, 2:68.
17. On tertianship, see Manuel Ruiz Jurado, “La Tercera Probación en la Compañia
de Jesús,” AHSI 60 (1991): 265–351.
18. In 1610 Visitor João Álvares dispensed Indies-bound Jesuits from tertianship, de-
spite repeated orders from Superiors General that no Jesuit forgo those experiences.
See Álvares, Visita da Provincia de Portugal, [Coimbra?], 1613, AN/TT Armário
Jesuítico, bk. 5:4; and Jurado, “La Tercera Probación,” 322.
19. Josef Wicki, “Dois Compêndios das Ordens dos Padres Gerais e Congregações
Provinciais de Provínica de Goa feitos in 1664,” Studia 43–44 (1980): 343–532, esp. 511.
20. António Franco, Imagem da Virtude em o Noviciado da Companhia de Jesus no
Real Collegio de Jesus de Coimbra, 2 vols. (Évora and Coimbra, 1719), 1:10–11.
21. Manuel Severim de Faria, Promptuario Espiritual (Lisbon, 1651), 147r.
22. António Franco, Imagem da Virtude em o Noviciado da Companhia de Jesus do
Real Collegio do Espirito Santo de Évora do Reyno de Portugal (Lisbon, 1714), 879.
23. Noël Golvers, François de Rougemont, SJ, Missionary in Ch’ang-shu (Chiang-Nan):
A Study of the Account Book (1674–1676) and the Elogium (Leuven, 1999), 93–237 and
553–630.
24. Triennial Catalogue, Vice-Province 1621–1666, ARSI Jap-Sin 134:301r–349v.
25. Thomas’s letters from 1663 to 1675 are in ARSI Jap-Sin 148:1r–17r; and ARSI FG
753:115, 121, and 127.
26. Adrien Demoustier, “Les Catalogues du Personnel de la Province de Lyon en
1587, 1606, et 1636,” AHSI 43 (1974): 3–84, esp. 68.
27. A form of teacher training was also used in the French provinces. See François
de Dainville, Les Jésuites et l’Education de la Société Française: La Naissance de
l’Humanisme Moderne (Paris, 1940), 344–346.
28. Álvares Orders, 24.
29. Demoustier, “Les Jésuites et l’enseignement,” 22–23; Dainville, Les Jésuites et
L’Éducation, 142–155; Society of Jesus, “Ratio Studiorum,” trans. Léone Albrieux and
Dolorès Pralon-Julia, ed. Marie-Madeleine Compère, in Ratio Studiorum, 161.
30. On Jesuit missions in Europe, see, for example, Louis Châtellier, The Religion of
the Poor: Rural Missions and the Formation of Modern Catholicism, c. 1500–c. 1800,
trans. Brian Pearce (Cambridge, 1997), 7–183; and Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della
Coscienza: Inquisitori, Confessori, Missionari (Turin, 1996), 551–684.
31. Teles, Chronica, 1:339.
32. Álvares Orders, 43.
33. Ibid., 45.
34. João Pereira, Report of Mission to Alcácer do Sal, [Évora?], April 1624, BNL
Mss. 30, no. 213:3r.
454
E Notes to Pages 218-224


35. [António Mascarenhas?], Mission Report, Coimbra, 1594, ARSI Lus 106:186r.
36. Jonathan Chaves, “Gathering Tea for God,” SWCRJ 24 (2004): 6–23.
37. Álvares Orders, 44 and 48.
38. Bartolomeu de Britto, Report of Mission to Setúbal, Setúbal, 20 April 1650,
BNL Mss. 30, no. 214:1v.
39. Mathais de Maya, AL Japan Province 1659 and 1660, Macau, [1661?], BAJA 49-
V-14:725v.
40. António de Lessa to Muzio Vitelleschi, Coimbra, 13 April 1642, ARSI Lus
74:288r.
41. Estêvão Collasso to Tirso González, Coimbra, 22 November 1694, ARSI FG 757,
no. 45.
42. Noël Golvers, “Les Litterae Indipetae et les Raisons Profondes des Vocations en
Chine aux Pays-Bas du Sud en 1640–1660,” pt. 1, Courrier Verbiest 12.3 (2000): 4–5;
pt. 2, ibid., 13.2 (2001): 6–7.
43. João de Lucena, Historia da Vida do P
. Francisco Xavier (Lisbon, 1600), 25–26.
44. Francisco de Betancor to Claudio Aquavivia, Coimbra, 10 April 1587, ARSI Lus
70:322r.
45. António de Lessa to Muzio Vitelleschi, Coimbra, 13 April 1642, ARSI Lus
74:288r.
46. [Pietro
Possini?],
Relatione
della
Sanità
Miracolozamente
Ricuperata
per
Intercessione di S. Francesco Saverio da Alexandro Filippucci de la Compagnia di Giesu
alli 12 de Marzo 1658 (Macerata, 1658); Marcello Mastrilli, Relaçam de hum Prodigioso
Milagre que o Glorioso S. Francisco Xavier Apostolo do Oriente obrou na Cidade de
Napoles no anno de 1634 (Goa, 1636), trans. Manuel de Lima, ed. Manuel Cadafaz de
Matos (Lisbon, 1989), 18.
47. Francisco de Betancor to Claudio Aquavivia, Coimbra, 10 April 1587, ARSI Lus
70:322r.
48. António de Lessa to Muzio Vitelleschi, Coimbra, 13 April 1642, ARSI Lus
74:288r.
49. See, for instance, the 1620 Annual Letter from the Vice-Province with the nota-
tion “read at the College of Évora and in Lisbon,” in Francisco Furtado, AL Vice-
Province 1620, Hangzhou, 24 August 1621, ARSI Jap-Sin 114:234r.
50. Anon., Catalogo de Alguns Martyres e Outros Varoens lllustres da Companhia
de Jesus, [Lisbon?, after 1695], BNL Reservados 4283:14r/v.
51. Brás Luis to Claudio Aquaviva, Évora, 6 June 1587, ARSI Lus 70:333r.
52. Almeida to Manuel Rodrigues, Canton, 5 November 1585, in OS 2:438 and 441.
53. Joachim Calmes to Giovanni Paolo Oliva, Coimbra, 6 January 1681, ARSI FG
757, no. 22; Estêvão Collasso to Tirso González, Coimbra, 22 November 1694, ARSI
FG 757, no. 45.
54. Cattaneo to Nuno Mascarenhas, Shanghai, 22 April 1619, ARSI Jap-Sin 161-I:33r;
Brief Catalogue, Province of Portugal 1601, ARSI Lus 39:36r.
455
Notes to Pages 225-230 F


55. Golvers, François de Rougemont, 14–15.
56. António de Lessa to Muzio Vitelleschi, Coimbra, 13 April 1642, ARSI Lus
74:288r.
57. Triennial Catalogue, Province of Portugal 1675, ARSI Lus 45:449r and 467v.
58. Triennial Catalogue, Province of Portugal 1678, ARSI Lus 46:5v and 27r.
59. Claudio Aquaviva, Responses to 1603 Provincial Congregation Resolutions
(Province of Portugal), BNL Reservados 753:43r/v.
60. António de Gouvea, “Ásia Extrema,” Fuzhou, 10 April 1644, BAJA 49-V-2:575r/v.
61. António Rebello to Muzio Vitelleschi, Lisbon, 8 August 1638, ARSI FG 757,
no. 51.
62. Adriano Pestana to Muzio Vitelleschi, Coimbra, 26 August 1640, ARSI FG 757,
no. 58.
63. Gabriel de Magalhães, Vida e Morte do Padre Estevão Fabro, Peking, 21 March
1658, BAJA 49-V-14:304r–305r.
64. Danielo Bartoli, Dell’Historia della Compagnia de Giesu: La Cina (Rome, 1663),
699.
65. Joseph Dehergne, citing an imprecise source, claims that of the 249 sent to
China via Portugal, 127 died en route. Nicolas Standaert gives more data but can only
speculate on the high rate of missionary wastage at sea. See Dehergne, 324; and
Standaert, “Jesuit Presence in China,” 4.
66. Ibid., 5.
67. [Alessandro Valignano and] Duarte de Sande, Diálogo sobre a Missão dos
Embaixadores Japoneses à Curia Romana, ed. and trans. Américo da Costa Ramalho
(Macau, 1997), 66.
68. On the Carreira da Índia, see Charles Boxer, “The Carreira da India (Ships,
Men, Cargoes, Voyages),” in From Lisbon to Goa, 1500–1700 (London, 1984), 33–82.
69. Simão Martins, Successos da Viagem . . . de Goa para Macao, Malacca, 18 De-
cember 1686, BAJA 49-V-19:834v.
70. Álvares Orders, 50–54; Viera Orders.
71. Vieira Orders, 14r.
72. Josef Wicki, “Liste der Jesuiten-Indienfahrer 1541–1758,” Aufsätze zur Portugie-
sischen Kulturgeschichte 7 (1967): 252–450.
73. Vieira Orders, 13v–14r.
74. Álvares Orders, 50.
75. Vieira Orders, 16v.
76. Ibid., 15v.
77. Girão to João Correia, Goa, 1 December 1583, in DI 12:866.
78. Vieira Orders, 16v.
79. Girão to João Correia, Goa, 1 December 1583, in DI 12:867–868.
80. [Valignano and] Sande, Diálogo, 41.
81. Anthony Disney, “Getting to the China Mission in the Early Seventeenth Cen-
456
E Notes to Pages 230-238


tury,” in Artur de Matos and Luís Thomaz, eds., Actas do VI Seminário Internacional
de Historia Indo-Portuguesa (Lisbon, 1993), 95–109, esp. 105.
82. Álvares Orders, 53.
83. Vieira Orders, 15v.
84. [Valignano and] Sande, Diálogo, 33.
85. Adrião Pedros to Giovanni Paolo Oliva, Lisbon, 7 October 1681, ARSI Goa 9-
II:323r.
86. Vieira Orders, 17r.
87. Ibid., 19v.
88. Disney, “Getting to the China Mission,” 103.
89. Álvares Orders, 51–52.
90. Vieira Orders, 17v.
91. Manuel Godinho Cardozo, Relação do Naufragio da Nao Santiago, in Bernardo
Gomes de Brito, ed., História Trágico Marítima (Lisbon, 1736); reprint, ed. Fernando
Ribeiro de Mello and Neves Águas, 2 vols. (Lisbon, 1971), 2:433–506.
92. Disney, “Getting to the China Mission,” 105–106.
93. António de Gouvea, AL Southern Residences, Vice-Province 1644, Fuzhou, 16
August 1645, in Gouvea, 197–198.
94. Golvers, François de Rougemont, 15–18.
95. André Ferrão, AL Vice-Province 1656, Macau, 29 January 1659, BAJA 49-V-
14:62v.
96. Ibid., 63r.
7. Learning the Language of Birds
1. Arnedo, AL Vice-Province 1685–1690, Ganzhou, 30 November 1691, ARSI Jap-
Sin 117:648r.
2. João Rodrigues to Muzio Vitelleschi, Macau, 28 January 1624, BAJA 49-V-6:153v.
3. Feliciano Pacheco, AL Central Residences, Vice-Province 1660, Huai’an, 19 July
1661, BAJA 49-V-14:704r.
4. Aquaviva to Valignano, Rome, 28 December 1587, ARSI Jap-Sin 3:13v.
5. Ruggieri to Everard Mercurian, Macau, 12 November 1581, in OS 2:401.
6. Ruggieri to Claudio Aquaviva, Zhaoqing, 7 February 1583, in OS 2:411.
7. Ruggieri to Everard Mercurian, Macau, 12 November 1581, in OS 2:401.
8. Ruggieri to Claudio Aquaviva, Zhaoqing, 7 February 1583, in OS 2:412.
9. Ricci to Martino de Fornari, Macau, 13 February 1583, in OS 2:27.
10. Ruggieri and Ricci, Dicionário Português-Chinês, ed. John Witek (Lisbon, 2001).
11. Ruggieri to Claudio Aquaviva, Zhaoqing, 7 February 1583, ARSI Jap-Sin 9-
I:137v. A discussion of Chinese pedagogical traditions in the Ming-Qing period is in
Benjamin Elman, A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China
(Berkeley, 2000), 260–292.
457
Notes to Pages 239-247 F


12. Qianzi wen (Fujian, 1579), ARSI Jap-Sin I 58a. See Chan, 112–114.
13. Francisco Cabral to Alessandro Valignano, Macau, 5 December 1584, in OS
2:429.
14. Ricci to Martino de Fornari, Macau, 13 February 1583, in OS 2:27.
15. FR 2:32–33.
16. Gabriel de Magalhães, Partial AL Hangzhou Residence 1640, Hangzhou, 30 Au-
gust 1641, BAJA 49-V-12:479r.
17. Ursis to [Italian Assistant?], Peking, 23 August 1608, ARSI Jap-Sin 14-II:316v.
18. Niccolò Longobardo, Appontamentos a cerca da Ida do nosso Padre Procurador
a Roma, Nanxiong, 8 May 1613, ARSI Jap-Sin 113:303r.
19. Sande, AL China Mission 1594, Macau, 28 October 1594, ARSI Jap-Sin 52:42v.
20. [Alessandro Valignano], Catalogue of Men and Residences, Macau, November
1592, in Josef Franz Shütte, Monumenta Historica Japoniae, vol. 1, Textus Catalogorum
Japoniae (1549–1654) (Rome, 1975), 285.
21. Alessandro Valignano, Catalogue for Japan Province, Macau, 1 January 1593,
ibid., 325.
22. Ricci to Claudio Aquaviva, Peking, 8 March 1608, in OS 2:340.
23. Longobardo to Girolamo Centimano, Shaozhou, 5 February 1598, in OS 2:468.
24. Vagnone to [Portuguese Assistant?], Nanjing, 16 March 1605, ARSI FG 730-I:1r.
25. Sabatino de Ursis to [Italian Assistant?], Peking, 23 August 1608, ARSI Jap-Sin
14-II:316r.
26. Ad Dudink, “The Inventories of the Jesuit House at Nanking,” in Masini, 145–
157, esp. 156.
27. Pantoja to Luis de Guzman, Peking, 9 March 1602, in Diego de Pantoja,
Relacion de la Entrada de Algunos Padres de la Cõpañia de Jesus en la China (Seville,
1605), 116r.
28. João Rodrigues, Arte Breve da Lingoa Iapoa (facsimile, transcription, and Japa-
nese translation), trans. and ed. Hino Hiroshi (Tokyo, 1993), 360.
29. João Paulo Oliveira e Costa, “Os Jesuítas no Japão (1549–1598): Uma Análise
Estatística,” in O Japão e o Cristianismo no Século XVI: Ensaios de História Luso-
Nipónica (Lisbon, 1999), 17–47, esp. 44–45.
30. Rodrigues, Arte Breve, 361.
31. Ibid., 360.
32. Monteiro, AL Vice-Province 1641, Hangzhou, 7 September 1642, ARSI Jap-Sin
117:44v.
33. João Fróis assured the readers of the 1631 Annual Letter that “the fears that they
have in Europe about the language and letters of China are greater than the dif-
ficulties.” See Fróis, AL Vice-Province 1631, [Hangzhou?], 1632, BAJA 49-V-10:36v.
34. Matos Orders, 223r/v.
35. Ratio China, 311r.
36. Ibid., 311r/v.
458
E Notes to Pages 249-258


37. [Francisco Simões], Breve Relação das Missões de . . . Pechili no principio deste
anno 1693, [Zhending?], 1693, BAJA 49-V-22:156v.
38. Eugenio Menegon, “Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars: The Localization of Chris-
tianity in Late Imperial Mindong (Fujian, China), 1632–1863” (Ph.D. diss., University
of California, Berkeley, 2002), 287–288.
39. Ratio China, 312r.
40. Ibid., 311v.
41. Ibid., 313r/v.
42. Ibid., 313v.
43. Ratio China, fols. 313v–314r.
44. Examples of these lists are in ARSI Jap-Sin IV 7, BNL Reservados 3306, and
BNL Reservados 7974.
45. Chan, 430–432.
46. Ratio China, 314v.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid., 312r.
49. Ibid., 311r–312r.
50. Monteiro Praxis, 14.
51. Ratio China, 313r.
52. Ibid., 314r.
53. Ibid., 313v–314r.
54. Ibid., 313r.
55. Ibid., 311r.
56. Ibid., 313r. Compare to David Mungello, “The Seventeenth-Century Jesuit
Translation Project,” in East West, 252–272, esp. 254.
57. Willard Peterson, “Learning from Heaven: The Introduction of Christianity and
Other Western Ideas into Late Ming China,” in CHC 8:789–839, esp. 805.
58. One of the few references to payments made to Chinese masters indicates, in
1623, that the cost per year ranged from 16 to 18 taels. See Manuel Dias the elder to
Jerónimo Rodrigues, Hangzhou, 3 April 1623, ARSI Jap-Sin 161-II:81r.
59. Ratio China, 312v.
60. Ibid., 314v.
61. On the Jesuits’ use of Zhang, see Henri Bernard, Sagesse Chinoise et Philosophie
Chrétienne (Leiden and Paris, 1935), 131; and Dudink, “Inventories,” 147, n. 50. Com-
pare Mungello, “Jesuit Translation Project,” 254.
62. Ratio China, 312v.
63. Ibid., 314v.
64. Ibid., 314v–315r.
65. Ibid., 312r.
66. Francisco Furtado, AL Vice-Province 1623, Hangzhou, 10 April 1624, BAJA 49-
V-6:106v.
459
Notes to Pages 258-269 F


67. Francisco Furtado, AL Vice-Province 1624, Hangzhou, 17 April 1625, BAJA 49-
V-6:184v.
68. Manuel Dias the younger, AL Vice-Province 1625, Jiading, 1 May 1626, BAJA 49-
V-6:230r; anon., AL Vice-Province 1626, [n.p., n.d.], BAJA 49-V-6:322r.
69. Brancati to Francisco Furtado, 1653, BNL Reservados 722:58v.
70. Francisco Furtado, Triennial Catalogue, Vice-Province 1636, ARSI Jap-Sin
134:311r–312v.
71. João Fróis, AL Vice-Province 1631, [Hangzhou?], 1632, BAJA 49-V-10:55v and
65r.
72. Palmeiro Orders, 37r.
73. [Manuel Dias the younger?], Brief Catalogue, Vice-Province, [1634?], ARSI Jap-
Sin 134:309r/v.
74. Furtado to Dias the elder, Nanchang, 1 January 1638, BAJA 49-V-12:200v.
75. Sishu, 6 vols., notations by Francesco Brancati, 1637–38, ARSI Jap-Sin I 10.
76. Ibid., 1:9r.
77. Ibid., 2:81r.
78. Ibid., 3:150r
79. Ibid., 4:237r.
80. Ibid., 6:397r.
81. Triennial Catalogue, Vice-Province 1639, ARSI Jap-Sin 134:316r; Gabriel de
Magalhães, AL Hangzhou Residence 1640, Hangzhou, 30 August 1641, BAJA 49-V-
12:479r.
82. Claudio Filippo Grimaldi, Breve Relação da Vida e Morte do Padre Luis Bulho,
Peking, 24 October 1682, BAJA 49-V-19:219v.
83. See Chan, 120–123 and 193.
84. Feliciano Pacheco, AL Central Residences, Vice-Province 1660, Huai’an, 19 July
1661, BAJA 49-V-14:718r.
85. Le Faure, AL Ganzhou Residence 1658, 1659, and 1660, Ganzhou, n.d., BAJA 49-
V-14:657v.
86. [André Ferrão?], Partial AL Fujian and Jiangxi Residences 1660, [n.p., 1661?],
BAJA 49-V-14:743r.
87. The translations made by Matteo Ricci in the early 1590s were never printed. See
FR 2:33. Henri Bernard suggests that the translation published by Intorcetta was done
by André Ferrão in 1660 and joined to Costa’s commentaries. See Bernard, Sagesse
Chinoise, 128–129.
88. Intorcetta, Sapientia Sinica, 2r.
89. Prospero Intorcetta, Memorial . . . ao P
. João Cardoso Provincial de Japão,
Macau, 12 September 1674, ARSI Jap-Sin 23:365r.
90. José Monteiro to Francisco Nogueira, Puching, 9 July 1695, BAJA 49-V-23:12r/v.
91. José Soares, Partial AL Vice-Province July 1694–July 1697, Peking, 30 July 1697,
BAJA 49-V-22:628v.
460
E Notes to Pages 269-280


92. The two masters were each paid two taels monthly. See Jean Valat, Carta e
Ordenações do Padre Jean Valat depois da Visita de Pekim, Peking, 14 March 1689,
ARSI Jap-Sin 164:50r.
93. Thomas to Joseph Tissanier, Peking, 16 September 1686, BAJA 49-V-19:870v.
94. Valat, Carta e Ordenações do Padre Jean Valat depois da Visita de Pekim, Pe-
king, 14 March 1689, ARSI Jap-Sin 164:49r.
95. Triennial Catalogue, Vice-Province 1688, ARSI Jap-Sin 134:370r; Triennial
Catalogue, Vice-Province 1697, ARSI Jap-Sin 134:380r.
96. Monteiro Praxis.
97. Francisco Varo, a Dominican who worked in Fujian Province, wrote a gram-
mar in the 1680s, titled Arte de la Lengua Mandarina, that was published at Canton in
1703. See W. South Colbin and Joseph Levi, eds. and trans., Francisco Varo’s Grammar
of the Mandarin Language (1703) (Philadelphia and Amsterdam, 2000).
98. Monteiro Praxis, 1.
99. Ibid., 17–19.
100. Ibid., 38–39.
101. Ibid., 61–78.
102. Anon., Chinese-Spanish Dictionary, BNL Reservados 11611:172v–174v.
103. Translation from James Legge, trans. and ed., The Four Books (New York,
1966), 308.
104. Anon., Chinese-Spanish Dictionary, BNL Reservados 11611:172v.
105. Francisco Nogueira, Ordens para as Residencias da China, Macau, [1694?],
BAJA 49-V-23:340r/v.
106. Soares to José Monteiro, Peking, 8 January 1705, BAJA 49-V-24:543r.
8. The Business of Conversion
1. Guerreiro 2:114–115.
2. The passage is Jeremiah 12:1, “Why doth the way of the wicked prosper? Why
is it well with all them that transgress, and do wickedly?”
3. Guerreiro 2:116.
4. These euphemisms are in Gabriel de Magalhães, Partial AL Vice-Province
1640, Hangzhou, 30 August 1641, BAJA 49-V-12:511v.
5. Nicolas Standaert, “Chinese Christians,” in Handbook, 380–391, esp. 386.
6. See, for example, Willard Peterson, “Why Did They Become Christians? Yang
T’ing-yün, Li Chih-tsao, and Hsü Kuang-ch’i,” in East West, 129–152; and Nicolas
Standaert, “Xu Guangqi’s Conversion as a Multi-faceted Process” in Jami et al., 170–
185.
7. See Erik Zürcher, “The Jesuit Mission in Fujian in Late Ming Times: Levels of
Response,” in E. B. Vermeer, ed., Development and Decline of Fukien Province in the
17th and 18th Centuries (Leiden, 1990), 417–457; and Erik Zürcher, “The Lord of
461
Notes to Pages 281-290 F


Heaven and the Demons: Strange Stories from a Late Ming Christian Manuscript,”
in G. Naundorf, K. H. Pohl, and H. H. Schmidt, eds., Religion und Philosophie in
Ostasien (Würzburg, 1985), 359–375.
8. Rodrigues to Claudio Aquaviva, Macau, 22 January 1616, ARSI Jap-Sin 16-
I:287v.
9. Francisco Cabral to Alessandro Valignano, Macau, 5 December 1584, in OS
2:430.
10. FR 1:314–315.
11. Longobardo to João Álvares, Shaozhou, 4 November 1598, in OS 2:475.
12. FR 2:193–194.
13. Ibid., 195.
14. On European doctrine teaching, see Sara Nalle, God in La Mancha: Religious
Reform and the People of Cuenca, 1500–1650 (Baltimore, 1992), 104–133; and Paul
Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300–1600 (Baltimore,
1989), 333–362.
15. For more, see Chan, 159 and 236.
16. Informação, 270r.
17. Guerreiro 1:257.
18. Cattaneo to Alfonso Vagnone, cited in Niccolò Longobardo, AL China Mission
1608, Shaozhou, 21 December 1609, ARSI Jap-Sin 113:111r–112r.
19. On Buddhist and Daoist critiques of Christianity, see Jacques Gernet, Chine et
Christianisme: Action et Réaction (Paris, 1982), 91–142; and Nicolas Standaert, Yang
Tingyun, Confucian and Christian in Late Ming China: His Life and Thought (Leiden,
1988), 161–182.
20. On Ming era Buddhism and Daoism, see Yü Chün-fang, “Ming Buddhism,”
in CHC 8:893–952; and Judith Berling, “Taoism in Ming Culture,” in CHC 8:953–
986.
21. Albert Chan, “Michele Ruggieri, S.J., and His Chinese Poems,” Monumenta
Serica 41 (1993): 129–176, esp. 159.
22. Cattaneo to Alfonso Vagnoni, cited in Niccolò Longobardo, AL China Mission
1608, Shaozhou, 21 December 1609, ARSI Jap-Sin 113:112r.
23. FR 2:229–230.
24. Informação, 276r.
25. Diogo Antunes, AL China Mission and AL College of Macau 1602, Macau, 29
January 1603, in João Paolo Oliveira e Costa and Ana Fernandes Pinto, eds., Cartas
Ânuas do Colégio de Macau (1594–1627) (Macau, 1999), 99.
26. Ibid., 99–100. Longobardo’s chronology corresponds to Kenneth Chen, Bud-
dhism in China: A Historical Survey (Princeton, 1964), 40–42.
27. Longobardo, Appontamentos acerca de pedirse a licentia del Rey pera a Nossa
Estada e pera a Pregação da Lei de Deos na China, Nanxiong, 19 February 1615, ARSI
Jap-Sin 113:461r–463v.
462
E Notes to Pages 291-300


28. Erik Zürcher, “Bouddhisme et Christianisme,” in Bouddhisme, Christianisme et
Société Chinoise (Paris, 1990), 11–42, esp. 32.
29. Longobardo, AL China Mission 1612, Nanxiong, 20 February 1613, ARSI Jap-Sin
113:238v and 239v.
30. Petris to Claudio Aquaviva, Shaozhou, 15 November 1592, in OS 2:464.
31. António de Gouvea, Asia Extrema, ed. Horácio Araújo, 3 vols. (Lisbon, 1995–),
2:173.
32. Diogo Antunes, AL China Mission and AL College of Macau 1602, Macau, 29
January 1603, in Oliveira e Costa and Pinto, Cartas Ânuas, 100.
33. Daniel Overmyer, Folk Buddhist Religion: Dissenting Sects in Late Traditional
China (Cambridge, Mass., 1976), 186; Susan Naquin, “The Transmission of White
Lotus Sectarianism in Late Imperial China,” in David Johnson, Andrew Nathan, and
Evelyn Rawski, eds., Popular Culture in Late Imperial China (Berkeley, 1985), 255–291.
34. Petris to Claudio Aquaviva, Shaozhou, 15 November 1592, in OS 2:464–465.
35. João da Rocha to Manuel Dias the elder, Nanjing, 5 October 1602, BAJA 49-V-
5:14r.
36. Ibid., 15r.
37. Figueiredo Ningbo, 144r.
38. Ibid., 153r.
39. Ibid., 144v.
40. [Manuel Dias the elder?], Lembrança para os Padres que vam em Missam Breve
cultivar os Christãos, [Macau?, 1624?], BAJA 49-V-7:317r/v.
41. Palmeiro Orders, 33v.
42. Gabriel de Magalhães, Vida e Morte do Padre Estevão Fabro, Peking, 21 March
1658, BAJA 49-V-14:315v–316r.
43. Figueiredo Ningbo, 145r/v.
44. A discussion of Jesuit iconography in China is found in Hui-Hung Chen, “En-
counters in Peoples, Religions, and Sciences: Jesuit Visual Culture in Seventeenth-
Century China” (Ph.D. diss., Brown University, 2004).
45. João Monteiro, AL Vice-Province 1637, Nanchang, 16 October 1638, BAJA 49-V-
12:55v.
46. Matos Orders, 230v.
47. Ferreira to Matteo Ricci, cited in Ricci to Claudio Aquaviva, Peking, 18 October
1607, in OS 2:323.
48. Figueiredo Ningbo, 145v.
49. Ibid., 146r.
50. Figueiredo claimed that this text had “greatly helped the Christian community.”
See Figueiredo, AL Vice-Province 1628, Hangzhou, 22 August 1629, BAJA 49-V-
6:597v. Compare to Chan, 71.
51. A Portuguese edition of Jorge’s text printed at Augsburg in 1616 noted that it had
been translated into “German, Latin, Greek, French, Italian, English, Bohemian,
463
Notes to Pages 300-308 F


Slavic, Hungarian, and Spanish.” Later versions appeared in Indian, East Asian,
African, and Native American tongues. See Marcos Jorge, Doutrina Christam . . .
Representada por Imagens, ed. Georg Mayr (Augsburg, 1616), 3.
52. Figueiredo Ningbo, 147r/v.
53. Ibid., 147v.
54. Ibid., 152v.
55. A Mi Tuo Fo, or Amitabha Buddha. Invoking this Buddha’s name is one of the
central practices of the Pure Land school. For further discussion, see Chen, Buddhism
in China, 342–350.
56. Figueiredo Ningbo, 147v.
57. Ibid., 153r.
58. António de Gouvea, Asia Extrema, Fuzhou, 10 April 1644, BAJA 49-V-2:574.
59. Mathias de Maya, AL Japan Province 1659 and 1660, Macau, [1661?], BAJA 49-
V-14:735v.
60. Erik Zürcher, “‘In the beginning’: 17th Century Chinese Reactions to Christian
Creationism,” in Zürcher and Chun-Chieh Huang, eds., Time and Space in Chi-
nese Culture (Leiden, 1995), 132–166; Derk Bodde, “Myths of Ancient China,” in
Charles Le Blanc and Dorothy Borei, eds., Essays on Chinese Civilization (Princeton,
1981), 45–84.
61. On Pangu, see E. T. C. Werner, A Dictionary of Chinese Mythology (Shanghai,
1932; reprint, Boston, 1977), 355.
62. This “Chronicle” may be one of the lei shu, compendia of myth and history fre-
quently written in less-than-erudite Chinese. It may also refer to the Shanhai jing, the
“Classic of Mountains and Seas,” where the story of Pangu appears. See Bodde,
“Myths,” 65.
63. Figueiredo Ningbo, 149v.
64. These Three Kings created the world: Tianhuang (king of heaven), Dihuang
(king of earth), and Renhuang (king of humans). For further discussion, see Bodde,
“Myths,” 65–79.
65. Zhuangzi and Spring and Autumn Annals record that in antiquity ten suns shone
in succession each day. Confusion in heaven during King Yao’s reign caused all ten
suns to appear at once, making many think the world would burn up. See ibid., 70.
66. In Huainan zi, an archer named Yi, or Hou Yi, saved the world by shooting all
but one of the suns. The figure who gathered the winds is likely Shen Yi, another
semi-divine archer. See ibid.; and Werner, Chinese Mythology, 159 and 418.
67. Figueiredo Ningbo, 149v–150r.
68. Mathias de Maya, AL Japan Province 1659 and 1660, Macau, [1661?], BAJA 49-
V-14:736r.
69. Figueiredo Ningbo, 150r/v.
70. Mathias de Maya, AL Japan Province 1659 and 1660, Macau, [1661?], BAJA 49-
V-14:735v–736r.
464
E Notes to Pages 308-313


71. Figueiredo Ningbo, 150v.
72. Ibid. For more on the Jesuits’ problems explaining the virgin birth, see Eugenio
Menegon, “Child Bodies, Blessed Bodies: The Contest between Christian Virginity
and Confucian Chastity,” Nan Nü: Men, Women, and Gender in Early and Late Impe-
rial China, 6.2 (2004): 177–240, esp. 207.
73. Figueiredo Ningbo, 151r.
74. Ibid., 151r and 153r.
75. Ibid., 151v.
76. Matos Orders, 229r.
77. On these practices, see Pei-yi Wu, “Self-examination and Confession of Sins
in Traditional China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 39.1 (June 1979): 5–38,
esp. 22–34.
78. Figueiredo Ningbo, 147r. On how the conversion process and baptism ritual
were understood by Chinese converts, see Erik Zürcher, “Confucian and Christian
Religiosity in Late Ming China,” Catholic Historical Review 83.4 (October 1997): 614–
653, esp. 635–638.
79. Figueiredo Ningbo, 151v.
80. Palmeiro Orders, 26v.
81. Cunha to Francisco Furtado, Yanping, 25 January 1653, BNL Reservados
722:47r.
82. Mendes to Miguel de Amaral, Nanchang, 8 February 1688, ARSI Jap-Sin 164:34r.
83. [Manuel Dias the elder?], Algumas Cousas Que se hão de guardar na Igreja,
Missas, Baptismos, e Enterramentos para em todas as Casas aver Conformidade,
[Macau?, 1624?], BAJA 49-V-7:315r/v.
84. Lazzaro Cattaneo, AL Vice-Province 1630, Hangzhou, 12 September 1631, BAJA
49-V-8:717r.
85. Palmeiro Orders, 26r–27r.
86. Cunha to Francisco Furtado, Yanping, 25 January 1653, BNL Reservados 722:46r.
87. Zürcher, “Levels of Response,” 445–449; Zürcher, “Strange Stories,” 362–371.
88. Francisco Furtado, AL Vice-Province 1623, Hangzhou, 10 April 1624, BAJA 49-
V-6:128v.
89. António de Gouvea, AL Vice-Province 1636, Hangzhou, 20 November 1637, in
Gouvea, 72.
90. Ibid., 69 and 113.
91. Ibid., 93.
92. António de Gouvea, AL Southern Residences, Vice-Province 1643, Fuzhou, 15
August 1645, in Gouvea, 135.
93. Baldassare Citadella, Relação . . . da Viagem de Macao a Ilha de Sanchoam,
Macau, 8 October 1644, ARSI Jap-Sin 64:244v–245r.
94. [Francisco Simões], Breve Relação das Missoens de . . . Pecheli no principio deste
anno de 1693, [Zhending?, March?] 1693, BAJA 49-V-22:164v.
465
Notes to Pages 314-321 F


95. João Fróis, AL Vice-Province 1634, Hangzhou, 8 September 1634, BAJA 49-V-
10:426v.
96. Gabriel de Magalhães, AL Vice-Province 1640, Hangzhou, 30 August 1641,
ARSI Jap-Sin 122:86v.
97. Costa, AL Northern Residences, Vice-Province 1647, Xi’an, [1648?], BAJA 49-
V-13:443r.
98. On duilian, see Ronald Knapp, China’s Living Houses: Folk Beliefs, Symbols,
and Household Ornamentation (Honolulu, 1999), 81–101.
99. Furtado, AL Vice-Province 1623, Hangzhou, 10 April 1624, BAJA 49-V-
14:127r. The reference is Acts 25:11, “I refuse not to die.”
100. António de Gouvea, AL Southern Residences, Vice-Province 1644, Fuzhou, 16
August 1645, in Gouvea, 191.
101. Rodrigo de Figueiredo, AL Vice-Province 1628, Hangzhou, 22 August 1629,
BAJA 49-V-6:598r.
102. Gouvea, Ásia Extrema, Fuzhou, 10 April 1644, BAJA 49-V-2:576. A translation
and analysis of the Rike is in Paul Brunner, L’Euchologe de la Chine: Editio Princeps
1628 et Développements jusqu’à nos Jours (Münster, 1964).
103. António de Gouvea, AL Vice-Province 1636, Hangzhou, 20 November 1637,
in Gouvea, 76.
104. António de Gouvea, AL Southern Residences, Vice-Province 1643, Fuzhou, 15
August 1645, in Gouvea, 126.
105. Ad Dudink, “Church Buildings,” in Handbook, 580–586, esp. 580.
106. [Jacques le Faure], AL Ganzhou Residence 1658, 1659, and 1660, Ganzhou,
[1661?], BAJA 49-V-14:653v.
107. Cunha, AL Jianning Residence 1645, Jianning, 1645, BAJA 49-V-13:348v–349r.
108. Simão da Cunha, Rol da Igrejas e Christandades, Yanping, 25 January 1653,
BNL Reservados 722:51r.
109. Palmeiro, Itinerario, Macau, 8 January 1630, BAJA 49-V-8:523v.
110. Susan Naquin, Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400–1900 (Berkeley, 2000), 211.
111. Magalhães, AL Northern Residences, Vice-Province 1658, Peking, 20 Septem-
ber 1659, BAJA 49-V-14:237v.
112. Directives issued in 1621 and 1629 stipulated that churches be erected in Chi-
nese style. See Matos Orders, 221r; and Palmeiro Orders, 32r.
113. [Le Faure], AL Ganzhou Residence 1658, 1659, and 1660, Ganzhou, [1661?],
BAJA 49-V-14:648v–650r.
9. A Good Method and Order
1. Jorge, AL Vice-Province 1652, Hangzhou, 7 May 1655, BAJA 49-IV-61:206r/v
and 228v.
2. Guerreiro 1:3.
466
E Notes to Pages 322-329


3. André Ferrão, AL Vice-Province 1656, Macau, 29 January 1659, BAJA 49-V-
14:82v.
4. For further discussion, see Nicolas Standaert, “Social Organisation of the
Church,” in Handbook, 456–461; and Fortunato Margiotti, “Congregazioni Mariane
della Antica Missione Cinese,” in Das Laienapostolat in den Missionen (Supplement
X), J. Specher and P
. W. Bühlmann, eds., Neue Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft
(1961): 131–151, esp. 132–137.
5. For more, see Nicolas Standaert and John Witek, “Catechists,” in Handbook,
470–473; and Robert Entenmann, “Chinese Catholic Clergy and Catechists in
Eighteenth-Century Szechuan,” in Actes du VIe Colloque International de Sinologie,
Chantilly, 1989: Images de la Chine, Le Contexte Occidental de la Sinologie Naissante
(Taipei, 1995), 389–410.
6. José Soares, Draft AL Vice-Province 1697, Peking, 30 July 1697, BAJA 49-V-
21:61v.
7. FR 1:270.
8. Ibid., 2:339.
9. Standaert, “Social Organisation,” 456–457.
10. Feliciano Pacheco, AL Central Residences, Vice-Province 1660, Huai’an, 19 July
1661, BAJA 49-V-14:717r. On the White Lotus sect in the Ming era, see Barend Ter
Haar, The White Lotus Teachings in Chinese Religious History (Leiden, 1992), 114–246.
11. Matos Orders, 229v.
12. Palmeiro Orders, 23v–24r.
13. Fróis, AL Vice-Province 1634, Hangzhou, 8 September 1634, BAJA 49-V-10:394v
and 426v.
14. João Monteiro, AL Vice-Province 1637, Nanchang, 16 October 1638, BAJA 49-V-
12:39v.
15. Lazzaro Cattaneo, AL Vice-Province 1630, Hangzhou, 12 September 1631, BAJA
49-V-8:716v.
16. João Monteiro, AL Vice-Province 1637, Nanchang, 16 October 1638, BAJA 49-V-
12:6v.
17. António de Gouvea, Ásia Extrema, Fuzhou, 10 April 1644, BAJA 49-V-2:437.
18. António de Gouvea, AL Southern Residences, Vice-Province 1643, Fuzhou, 15
August 1645, in Gouvea, 129.
19. António de Gouvea, AL Southern Residences, Vice-Province 1647, Fuzhou, 20
January 1649, in Gouvea, 371.
20. Francesco Brancati, AL Shanghai Residence 1648, Shanghai, 1648, BAJA 49-V-
13:479r/v.
21. António de Gouvea, AL Vice-Province 1649, Fuzhou, 15 November 1650, in
Gouvea, 412.
22. Francesco Brancati, AL Shanghai Residence 1644, Shanghai, 12 March [1645?],
BNL Reservados 722:266v.
467
Notes to Pages 329-336 F


23. António de Gouvea, AL Southern Residences, Vice-Province 1644, Fuzhou, 16
August 1645, in Gouvea, 189–190.
24. [Francisco Furtado?], AL Northern Residences, Vice-Province 1643, 1644, and
1645, [Peking?, 1646], BAJA 49-V-13:119v.
25. Brancati, AL Shanghai Residence 1658, Shanghai, 1658, BAJA 49-V-14:472v.
26. Brancati to Francisco Furtado, Shanghai, [1653?], BA 50-V-38:92v and 97r.
27. Feliciano Pacheco, AL Central Residences, Vice-Province 1660, Huai’an, 19 July
1661, BAJA 49-V-14:715v.
28. André Ferrão, AL Vice-Province 1656, Macau, 29 January 1659, BAJA 49-V-
14:91v.
29. Marian CS. Translation by Chen Huihung and Tang Haitao. For more on this
text, see Chan, 459–460. Reproduction in CCT 12:489–494.
30. Marian CS, 10r.
31. Ibid., 10r, 11r/v.
32. Ibid., 10v–11r.
33. Philippe Couplet, Historia de una Gran Señora Christiana de la China, llamada
Doña Candida Hiù (Madrid, 1691), 88–89.
34. Marian CS, 11r.
35. On confraternity reform in Catholic Europe, see Marc Venard, “Les Confréries
dans l’Espace Urbain: L’Exemple de Rouen,” in Le Catholicisme à l’Épreuve dans la
France du XVIe Siècle (Paris, 2000), 221–235.
36. [Juan Antonio de Arnedo?], AL Nanchang Residence 1692, Nanchang, [1693?],
BAJA 49-V-22:170r.
37. Marian CS, 11r/v.
38. Ibid., 12r/v.
39. On Chinese funeral practices, see J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious System of
China: Its Ancient Forms, Evolution, History, and Present Aspect, Manners, Customs, and
Social Institutions Connected Therewith, 6 vols. (Leiden, 1892), 1:3–240.
40. Funeral Ritual. Translation by Chen Huihung and Tang Haitao. On this text,
see Chan, 460. Reproduction in CCT 5:439–446.
41. Funeral Ritual, 13r–16v.
42. Ibid., 13r, 16v.
43. Ibid., 15r/v.
44. On Jesuit doctrine teaching in early modern Europe, see Alain Lottin, “La
Catechese en Milieu Populaire au XVIIe Siècle: L’Exemple de l’École Dominicale de
Valenciennes et du Père Marc (1584–1638),” in Être et Croire à Lille et en Flandre,
XVIe–XVIIIe siècle (Arras, 2000), 405–417.
45. Inácio Martins (1531–1598), the Jesuit who revised the doctrine primer originally
written by Marcos Jorge.
46. For further discussion, see Chan, 155–156.
468
E Notes to Pages 337-347


47. Gabriel de Magalhães, AL Northern Residences, Vice-Province 1660, Peking, 20
July 1662, BAJA 49-V-14:697v.
48. Cunha to Francisco Furtado, Yanping, 25 January 1653, BNL Reservados
722:47v.
49. Ibid., 48r.
50. Hubert Verhaeren, trans. and ed., “Les Ordonnonces de la Sainte Église,”
Monumenta Serica 4 (1939–40): 451–477, esp. 466 and 458.
51. Ibid., 466.
52. Noël Golvers, François de Rougemont, SJ, Missionary in Ch’ang-shu (Chiang-Nan):
A Study of the Account Book (1674–1676) and the Elogium (Leuven, 1999), 427–428.
53. Couplet, Gran Señora, 41.
54. Soares to Antoine Thomas, Jiangzhou, 29 April 1687, BAJA 49-V-20:70v.
55. Standaert and Witek, “Catechists,” 471.
56. António de Gouvea, AL Vice-Province 1636, Hangzhou, 20 November 1637, in
Gouvea, 77.
57. António de Gouvea, AL Southern Residences, Vice-Province 1644, Fuzhou, 16
August 1645, in Gouvea, 201.
58. Rodrigo de Figueiredo to Francisco Furtado, Kaifeng, [1639?], in Gabriel de
Magalhães, Partial AL Vice-Province 1640, Hangzhou, 30 August 1641, BAJA 49-V-
12:490v.
59. Ibid., 489r/v.
60. Feliciano Pacheco, AL Central Residences, Vice-Province 1660, Huai’an, 19 July
1661, BAJA 49-V-14:708v–709r.
61. Golvers, François de Rougemont, 424.
62. Feliciano Pacheco, Ordens feitos em Consultas Plenas Extraordinarias, Canton,
[January 1668?], ARSI Jap-Sin 162:255v.
63. Couplet, Gran Señora, 40–41.
64. Ibid., 38–39.
65. Verbiest to Filippo Marini, Peking, 24 August 1678, BAJA 49-V-17:504r.
66. Verbiest to Francesco Saverio Filippucci, Peking, 7 January 1684, BAJA 49-V-
19:473r.
67. See Chan, 350–351.
68. Lubelli to the Jesuits of the Japan Province and the Vice-Province, Macau, 6
March 1681, BAJA 49-V-19:51v.
69. Ibid., 52r.
70. Golvers, François de Rougemont, 412–421, 140, and 137.
71. José Soares, Draft AL Vice-Province 1697, Peking, 30 July 1697, BAJA 49-V-
21:61v.
72. Veiga, AL Hainan Residence, June 1686–July 1687, Qiongzhou, 22 August 1687,
BAJA 49-V-19:843v.
469
Notes to Pages 348-357 F


73. Xavier CS. Translation by Chen Huihung and Tang Haitao. For more on this
text, see Chan, 458–459. Reproduction in CCT 12:479–487.
74. Xavier CS, 5r.
75. Ibid., 5v–6r.
76. Ibid., 6r/v, 8r/v.
77. Erik Zürcher, “The Lord of Heaven and the Demons: Strange Stories from a
Late Ming Christian Manuscript,” in G. Naundorf, K. H. Pohl, and H. H. Schmidt,
eds., Religion und Philosophie in Ostasien (Würzburg, 1985), 359–375, esp. 366–370.
78. Francisco da Veiga, AL Hainan Residence, June 1686–July 1687, Qiongzhou, 22
August 1687, BAJA 49-V-19:845v.
79. Xavier CS, 6v–8r.
80. Ibid., 8v.
81. Arnedo, AL Vice-Province 1685–1690, Ganzhou, 20 September 1691, BAJA 49-
V-19:672r/v.
82. Juan Antonio de Arnedo, AL Vice-Province 1685–1690, Ganzhou, 30 November
1691, ARSI Jap-Sin 117:238v.
83. Juan Antonio de Arnedo, AL Vice-Province 1685–1690, Ganzhou, 20 September
1691, BAJA 49-V-19:670r.
84. Ibid., 671v.
85. José Soares, Partial AL Vice-Province, July 1694–July 1697, Peking, 30 July 1697,
BAJA 49-V-22:633v.
86. Juan Antonio de Arnedo, AL Vice-Province 1685–1690, Ganzhou, 30 September
1691, BAJA 49-V-19:671v.
87. José Soares, Partial AL Vice-Province, July 1694–July 1697, Peking, 30 July 1697,
BAJA 49-V-22:632v–633r.
88. Giandomenico Gabiani to Simão Martins, Nanjing, 4 March 1688, BAJA 49-V-
20:202v–203r.
89. Soares, Draft AL Vice-Province 1697, Peking, 30 July 1697, BAJA 49-V-21:60r.
90. Ibid., 64v.
91. Antoine Thomas, Triennial Catalogue, Vice-Province 1703, Peking, 25 Septem-
ber 1703, ARSI Jap-Sin 134:408Fv.
92. Anon., Relação Summaria da Prizam, Tormentos, e Glorioso Martyrio dos
Veneraveis Padres António Joseph Portuguez e Tristam de Attamis Italiano (Lisbon,
1751), 12.
10. Brothers of Passion and Mercy
1. Feliciano Pacheco, AL Central Residences, Vice-Province 1660, Huai’an, 19 July
1661, BAJA 49-V-14:715r.
2. Ibid., 716r.
470
E Notes to Pages 358-367


3. Nicolas Standaert, Yang Tingyun, Confucian and Christian in Late Ming China:
His Life and Thought (Leiden, 1988), 63.
4. See Standaert, “Social Organization,” in Handbook, 456–461, esp. 457.
5. This goal is stated in Álvares Orders, 49.
6. On Jesuit Marian sodalities in Europe, see Louis Châtellier, The Europe of the
Devout: The Catholic Reformation and the Formation of a New Society, trans. Jean
Birrelli (Cambridge, 1989), 3–46.
7. Soares, Draft AL Vice-Province 1697, Peking, 30 July 1697, BAJA 49-V-21:63v.
8. FR 2:482.
9. Pantoja to Luís de Guzman, Peking, 9 March 1602, in Diego de Pantoja, Relacion
de la Entrada de Algunos Padres de la Cõpañia de IESVS en la China (Seville, 1605), 54r.
10. Joanna Handlin Smith, “Benevolent Societies: The Reshaping of Charity during
the Late Ming and Early Ch’ing,” Journal of Asian Studies 46.2 (1987): 309–337.
11. Pantoja to Luis de Guzman, Peking, 9 March 1602, in Pantoja, Relacion, 54r.
12. Yü Chün-fang, The Renewal of Buddhism in China: Chu-hung and the Late Ming
Synthesis (New York, 1981), 9–27 and 192–222.
13. Standaert, Yang Tingyun, 64–65.
14. Manuel Dias the younger, AL Vice-Province 1627, Shanghai, 9 May 1628, BAJA
49-V-6:480v.
15. Niccolò Longobardo, AL Vice-Province 1613, Nanxiong, 1 August 1614, ARSI
Jap-Sin 113:360r/v.
16. Matteo Ricci and Nicolas Trigault, De Christiana Expeditione apud Sinas
(Augsburg, 1615), 589.
17. On the 1587 Common Rules, and a translation, see Elder Mullan, History of the
Prima Primaria Sodality of the Annunciation and Sts. Peter and Paul (St. Louis, 1917),
74–76 and 325–340.
18. Châtellier, The Europe of the Devout, 49–109.
19. Marc Venard, “Qu’est ce qu’une Confrérie de Dévotion? Réflexions sur les
Confréries Rouennais du Saint Sacrement,” in Le Catholicisme à l’Épreuve dans la
France du XVIe Siècle (Paris, 2000), 237–247, esp. 246.
20. Anon., Regra dos Estudantes Congregados da Virgem Nossa Senhora da Annunciada
na sua Confraria sita na Universidade de Evora da Companhia de Jesus (Évora, 1662), 1.
21. FR 2:482 and 492.
22. Marc Venard, “La Crise des Confréries en France au XVIe Siècle,” in
Catholicisme à l’Épreuve, 249–268.
23. Informação, 274v and 275v.
24. Contemporary Buddhist groups apparently used a less stringent regime of devo-
tional activities than their Christian counterparts. See Timothy Brook, Praying for
Power: Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry Society in Late Ming China (Cambridge,
Mass., 1993), 105 and 44.
471
Notes to Pages 368-373 F


25. Furtado, AL China Mission 1620, Hangzhou, 24 August 1621, ARSI Jap-Sin
113:245v and 255v.
26. Francisco Furtado, AL Vice-Province 1624, Hangzhou, 17 April 1625, BAJA 49-
V-6:180r.
27. Anon., AL Vice-Province 1626, [n.p., 1627?], BAJA 49-V-6:314v–315r.
28. Manuel Dias the younger, AL Vice-Province 1625, Jiading, 1 May 1626, BAJA 49-
V-6:220v.
29. Rodrigo de Figueiredo, AL Vice-Province 1628, Hangzhou, 22 August 1629,
BAJA 49-V-6:585v.
30. Standaert, Yang Tingyun, 60–62.
31. Palmeiro Orders, 23v–24r.
32. António de Gouvea, AL Vice-Province 1636, Hangzhou, 20 November 1637, in
Gouvea, 74–75.
33. Philippe Couplet, Historia de una Gran Señora Christiana de la China, llamada
Doña Candida Hiù (Madrid, 1691), 36.
34. António de Gouvea, AL Vice-Province 1636, Hangzhou, 20 November 1637, in
Gouvea, 78–79.
35. Figueiredo to Francisco Furtado, Kaifeng, [1639?], in Gabriel de Magalhães, Par-
tial AL Vice-Province 1640, Hangzhou, 30 August 1641, BAJA 49-V-12:489v.
36. António de Gouvea, “Asia Extrema,” Fuzhou, 10 April 1644, BAJA 49-V-2:432.
37. On the Misericórdias, see Isabel dos Guimarães Sá, Quando o Rico se faz Pobre:
Misericórdias, Caridade e Poder no Império Português, 1500–1800 (Lisbon, 1997), 49–
86; and A. J. R. Russell-Wood, Fidalgos and Philanthropists: The Santa Casa da
Misericórdia of Bahia, 1550–1755 (Berkeley, 1968), 1–41.
38. Magalhães, AL Hangzhou Residence 1640, Hangzhou, 30 August 1641, BAJA 49-
V-12:483v.
39. Erik Zürcher, “Christian Social Action in Late Ming Times: Wang Zheng and
His ‘Humanitarian Society,’” in Jan de Meyer and Peter Engelfriet, eds., Linked
Faiths: Essays on Chinese Religions and Traditional Culture in Honour of Kristofer
Schipper (Leiden, 1999), 269–286, esp. 278.
40. António de Gouvea, AL Vice-Province 1636, Hangzhou, 20 November 1637, in
Gouvea, 61.
41. Ibid., 149.
42. Standaert, Yang Tingyun, 65.
43. Cunha to Francisco Furtado, Yanping, 25 January 1653, BNL Reservados 722:45r.
44. [Inácio da Costa?], AL Northern Residences, Vice-Province 1643, 1644, and 1645,
[Xi’an?, 1646?], BAJA 49-V-13:116r.
45. Costa, AL Northern Residences, Vice-Province 1647, [Xi’an?, 1648?], BAJA 49-
V-13:442v.
46. Manuel Jorge, AL Vice-Province 1651, [Hangzhou, 1652?], BA 50-V-38:165v.
472
E Notes to Pages 374-380


47. André Ferrão, AL Vice-Province 1656, Macau, 29 January 1659, BAJA 49-V-
14:68v.
48. Brancati to Francisco Furtado, Shanghai, [1653?], BA 50-V-38:97r.
49. André Ferrão, AL Vice-Province Northern Residences, Vice-Province 1656,
Macau, 29 January 1659, BAJA 49-V-14:91r.
50. Gabriel de Magalhães, AL Northern Residences, Vice-Province 1658, Peking, 20
September 1659, BAJA 49-V-14:261r.
51. Gabriel de Magalhães, AL Northern Residences, Vice-Province 1659, Peking, 20
November 1661, BAJA 49-V-14:547r/v.
52. Gabriel de Magalhães, AL Northern Residences, Vice-Province 1658, Peking, 20
September 1659, BAJA 49-V-14:241v.
53. Hubert Verhaeren, trans. and ed., “Les Ordonnonces de la Sainte Église,”
Monumenta Serica 4 (1939–40): 451–477, esp. 462 and 465.
54. António de Gouvea, AL Southern Residences, Vice-Province 1644, Fuzhou, 16
August 1645, in Gouvea, 217.
55. Brancati to Luis Espineli, Suzhou, 9 October 1661, ARSI Jap-Sin 124:19r. Further
discussion of the Jesuits’ encouragement of corporal mortification in southern Italy is
in Jennifer Selwyn, A Paradise Inhabited by Devils: The Jesuits’ Civilizing Mission in
Early Modern Naples (Aldershot and Rome, 2004), 227–242.
56. Feliciano Pacheco, Ordens feitos em Consultas Plenas Extraordinarias, Canton,
[January 1668?], ARSI Jap-Sin 162:255v.
57. Juan Eusebio Nieremberg, Vida del Santo Padre . . . Francisco de Borja (Madrid,
1644), 9.
58. Anon., Regra dos Estudantes, 10.
59. Couplet, Gran Señora, 87.
60. Ibid., 35.
61. Noël Golvers, François de Rougemont, SJ, Missionary in Ch’ang-shu (Chiang-Nan):
A Study of the Account Book (1674–1676) and the Elogium (Leuven, 1999), 424–430.
62. Mendes to Miguel de Amaral, Nanchang, 8 February 1688, ARSI Jap-Sin 164:32r.
63. Gabriel de Magalhães, AL Peking Residence 1673 and 1674, Peking, [1675?],
BAJA 49-V-16:185v.
64. Juan Antonio de Arnedo, AL Vice-Province 1685–1690, Ganzhou, 30 September
1691, BAJA 49-V-19: 652r/v.
65. José Soares, Draft AL Vice-Province 1697, Peking, 30 July 1697, BAJA 49-V-
21:66v–68v.
66. José Soares to Tirso González, Peking, 28 September 1694, ARSI Jap-Sin 166:29r.
67. José Soares, Draft AL Vice-Province 1697, Peking, 30 July 1697, BAJA 49-V-
21:62v–63r.
68. Ibid., 63v–64r.
69. Ibid., 65r/v.
473
Notes to Pages 380-387 F


70. Soares to Tirso González, Peking, 28 September 1694, ARSI Jap-Sin 166:29r.
71. Jean de Fontaney, Remarques sur les Regles de la Congregation de N.D. etablie a
Pekin . . . dont le Pere Suares a soin, Amoy, 14 November 1697, ARSI Jap-Sin
166:256r–257v.
72. José Soares, Partial AL Vice-Province, July 1694–June 1697, Peking, 30 July 1697,
BAJA 49-V-22:642r. The Fuzhou Jesuits also petitioned the Society’s superiors to rec-
ognize their group. See José Monteiro to Tirso González, Fuzhou, 15 September 1695,
ARSI Jap-Sin 166:80r.
73. João Monteiro, AL Vice-Province, 1637, Nanchang, 16 October 1638, BAJA 49-
V-12:39v.
74. António de Gouvea, AL Southern Residences, Vice-Province, 1645, Fuzhou, 15
June 1646, in Gouvea, 238.
75. João Monteiro, AL Vice-Province, 1641, Hangzhou, 7 September 1642, BNL
Reservados 722:29r.
76. Gabriel de Magalhães, AL Northern Residences, Vice-Province, 1658, Peking, 20
September 1659, BAJA 49-V-14:261r.
77. Augery, Statutes for the Sodality of the Blessed Virgin (Shengmu huigui),
Hangzhou, [1660–1672?], ARSI Jap-Sin II, 173.2a. Translation by Chen Huihung
and Tang Haitao. For more on this text, see Chan, 233–234. Reproduction in CCT
12:441–462.
78. Augery, Shengmu, 1–2.
79. Ibid., 3.
80. Ibid., 4–6 and 8.
81. Ibid., 9–10 and 6.
82. Ibid., 6–8.
83. Ibid., 6–7 and 11.
84. António de Gouvea, “Asia Extrema,” Fuzhou, 10 April 1644, BAJA 49-V-1:437r/
v; and Standaert, Yang Tingyun, 65.
85. João Fróis, AL Vice-Province, 1632, Hangzhou, 1 August 1632, BAJA 49-V-
10:82v.
86. Magalhães, AL Northern Residences, Vice-Province, 1659, Peking, 20 November
1661, BAJA 49-V-14:530r.
87. Zürcher, “Social Action,” 276–277. Also, Standaert, Yang Tingyun, 65–66.
88. Charity CS. Translation by Chen Huihung and Tang Haitao. For more, see
Chan, 457–458. Reproduction in CCT 12:473–487.
89. Charity CS, 1r/v.
90. Ibid., 1v–2v.
91. Ibid., 3v.
92. Ibid., 3r/v.
93. Erik Zürcher, “Confucian and Christian Religiosity in Late Ming China,” Cath-
olic Historical Review 83.4 (October 1997): 614–653, 629–630, and 639.
474
E Notes to Pages 387-396


94. Pacheco, AL Central Residences, Vice-Province, 1660, Huai’an, 19 July 1661,
BAJA 49-V-14:711v.
95. Couplet, Gran Señora, 36.
96. António de Gouvea, AL Southern Residences, Vice-Province, 1644, Fuzhou,
16 August 1645, in Gouvea, 188.
97. André Ferrão, AL Vice-Province, 1656, Macau, 29 January 1659, BAJA 49-V-
14:69r.
98. Augery, Statutes for the Confraternity of the Passion (Tianzhu yesu kuhui),
Hangzhou, [1660–1672?], ARSI Jap-Sin I 173.2b [hereafter Kuhui]. Translation by
Chen Huihung and Tang Haitao. For more, see Chan, 234. Reproduction in CCT
12:463–469.
99. Augery, Kuhui, 12–13.
100. Ibid., 13–15.
101. Ibid., 14.
102. Ibid., 13–14.
103. Anon., Regra dos Estudantes, 9.
104. Augery, Kuhui, 15.
Conclusion
1. For more on Saldanha’s embassy, see John Wills Jr., Embassies and Illusions:
Dutch and Portuguese Envoys to K’ang-hsi, 1666–1687 (Cambridge, Mass., 1984), 82–
126.
2. Pimentel, Breve Relação da Jornada que fes a Corte de Pekim o Sr. Manoel de
Saldanha, Macau, [1672?], BNL Mss. 10, no. 1:88v–89r. Although these passages were
translated by the author, a full translation of Pimentel’s text is in Wills, Embassies,
193–236.
3. Pimentel, Breve Relação, 89r.
4. Ibid., 88v and 103v.
5. Ibid., 103v–104r.
6. For more on the limits of colonial power in the Americas, see Christine
Daniels and Michael V. Kennedy, eds., Negotiated Empires: Centers and Peripheries in
the Americas, 1500–1820 (New York, 2002).
7. Pedro Dias, Arte da Lingua de Angola (Lisbon, 1697); Luis de Valdivia, Arte y
Gramatica General de la Lengua que corre en todo el Reyno de Chile (Lima, 1606); Tomé
Estêvão (Thomas Stephens), Arte da Lingoa Canarim (Rachol, 1640). On the creation
of the lingua geral in Brazil, see Charlotte de Castelnau-L’Estoile, Les Ouvriers d’une
Vigne Stérile: Les Jésuites et la Conversion des Indiens au Brésil, 1580–1620 (Lisbon and
Paris, 2000), 141–169.
8. Ernest Burrus, ed. and trans., Kino Writes to the Duchess: Letters of Eusebio
Francisco Kino, S.J., to the Duchess of Aveiro (Rome and St. Louis, 1965), 163–164.
475
Notes to Pages 396-408 F


9. Ruben Gold Thwaites, The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents, 73 vols. (Cleve-
land, 1896–1901), 5:113 and 117.
10. On the differences among Chinese dialects, see Jerry Norman, Chinese (Cam-
bridge, 1988), 181–244.
11. Alonso de Sandoval, Un Tratado sobre la Esclavitud, ed. Enriqueta Vila Vilar
(Madrid, 1987), 370–375.
12. James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in Colonial North
America (Oxford, 1985), 81–88.
13. John Steckley, “The Warrior and the Lineage: Jesuit Use of Iroquois Images to
Communicate Christianity,” Ethnohistory 39.4 (Autumn 1992): 478–509.
14. Dot Tuer, “Old Bones and Beautiful Words: The Spiritual Contestation between
Shaman and Jesuit in the Guaraní Missions,” in Jodi Bilinkoff and Allan Greer, eds.,
Colonial Saints: Discovering the Holy in the Americas, 1500–1800 (New York, 2003), 77–
97.
15. S. Jeyaseela Stephen, ed. and trans., Letters of the Portuguese Jesuits from Tamil
Countryside, 1666–1688 (Pondicherry, 2001), 270.
16. Hubert Jacobs, ed., The Jesuit Makasar Documents (1615–1682) (Rome, 1988), 25.
17. Hugues Didier, ed., Os Portugueses no Tibete: Os Primeiros Relatos dos Jesuítas
(1624–1635), coord. Paulo Lopes Matos, trans. Lourdes Júdice (Lisbon, 2000), 126.
18. John Steckley, trans. and ed., De Religione: Telling the Seventeenth-Century Jesuit
Story in Huron to the Iroquois (Norman, Okla., 2004), 51.
19. António Brásio, ed., Monumenta Missionaria Africana, 15 vols. (Lisbon, 1952–),
7:372.
20. Ibid., 7:379.
21. António Vieira, Obras Varias, ed. J. M. C. Seabra and T. Q. Antunes, 2 vols.
(Lisbon, 1856), 2:72–73.
22. Antonio Ruiz de Montoya, The Spiritual Conquest Accomplished by the Religious of
the Society of Jesus in the Provinces of Paraguay, Paraná, Uruguay, and Tape, ed. C. J.
McNaspy, trans. C. J. McNaspy, John Leonard, and Martin Palmer (St. Louis, 1993),
118.
23. Sandoval, Tratado, 264.
24. Kawamura Shinzo, “Making Christian Lay Communities during the ‘Christian
Century’ in Japan: A Case Study of Takata District in Bungo” (Ph.D. diss.,
Georgetown University, 1999), 118–219; Peter Nosco, “Secrecy and the Transmission
of Tradition: Issues in the Study of ‘Underground’ Christians,” Japanese Journal of Re-
ligious Studies 20.1 (1993): 3–29, esp. 3–10.
25. Stephen, Letters, 6.
26. Allan Greer, “Conversion and Identity: Iroquois Christianity in Seventeenth-
Century New France,” in Kenneth Mills and Anthony Grafton, eds., Conversion: Old
Worlds and New (Rochester, N.Y., 2003), 175–198, esp. 182.
27. Brasio, Monumenta Missiologica, 7:383.
476
E Notes to Pages 409-414


28. Ernesto J. A. Maeder, Cartas Anuas de la Provincia de Paraguay, 1637–1639 (Bue-
nos Aires, 1984), 103 and 106.
29. Greer, “Conversion and Identity,” 188–189.
30. Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 6:25.
31. José de Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, ed. Jane Mangan and
Walter Mignolo, trans. Frances López-Morillo (Durham, N.C., 2002), 339.
32. Didier, Portugueses no Tibete, 86.
33. Serafim Leite, Luiz Figueira: A Sua Vida Heróica e Sua Obra Literária (Lisbon,
1940), 115.
34. Axtell, Invasion Within, 74–75.
35. Ines Øupanov, Missionary Tropics: The Catholic Frontier in India (16th–17th Cen-
turies) (Ann Arbor, 2005).
36. Thwaites, Jesuit Relations, 6:145
37. Ibid., 46:291 and 293.
38. One example is the Jesuits’ hesitant participation in the Andean extirpation cam-
paigns in the later seventeenth century. See Kenneth Mills, Idolatry and Its Enemies:
Colonial Andean Religion and Extirpation, 1640–1750 (Princeton, 1997), 162–164.
477
Notes to Pages 415-418 F




Illustration Credits
Maps on pages 26-27, 88, 122, and 175 by Christopher L. Brest
Page
38–39
Image courtesy Biblioteca Pública de Évora, códex cxv/2-1, map no. 47.
72
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Carl Selden Trust, several
members of The Chairman’s Council, Gail and Parker Gilbert, and Lila
Acheson Wallace Gifts, 1999 (1999.222). Photograph, all rights reserved,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
120–121
Princeton University Library.
131
Universitätsbibliothek München, 2° P
.or.33.
146
The Scheide Library at Princeton University.
196
Image courtesy of the Instituto de Investigação Científica Tropical—
Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino, Lisbon.
208
Photograph by author.
229
Museu Nacional de Machado de Castro, Coimbra. Photograph by José
Pessoa, Divisão de Documentação Fotográfica—Instituto Português de
Museus.
248
ARSI Shelfmark Jap-Sin I-58a, fol. 27r. Image courtesy Archivum
Historicum Societatis Iesu—Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, Rome.
274
ARSI Shelfmark Jap-Sin I-10, fol. 9v. Image courtesy Archivum
Historicum Societatis Iesu—Institutum Historicum Societatis Iesu, Rome.
278
Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and
Tilden Foundations.
304
Courtesy Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.



342
Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (1365–379).
376
Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (1365–379).
400
Courtesy Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
480
E Illustration Credits


Index
Acosta, José de, 416
Africa, 406; Angola, 408; slaves from, 130, 235,
409, 413
Agnus dei pendants. See Devotional objects
Alcácer do Sal, 224
Aleni, Giulio, 80, 257; in Shanxi Province, 78;
Zhifang waiji, 80; Dizui zhenggui , 81; Misa
jiyi , 81, 323; on Shangdi, 87; in Fujian Prov-
ince, 95, 103, 115; as Vice-Provincial for south-
ern China, 109; Tianzhu jiangsheng chuxiang
jingjie, 305
Alexander VII, 119 , 162, 185
Almeida, António de, 36, 37, 228
Almeida, José de, 109, 110
Almeida, Sebastião de, 149
Álvares, João, 18, 222, 224, 236, 237, 239,
240
Álvares, Manuel: De Institutione Grammatica,
412
Amaral, Miguel de, 170, 194, 280
Analects. See Four Books
Ancestor cult, 76, 105, 107, 118, 133, 187, 200,
298, 345
Andrade, António de, 99, 411–412, 416
Annual Letters, 62, 63, 82, 83, 92, 94, 107–108,
153, 214, 223, 228, 241–242, 255, 268, 269, 289,
300, 303, 305, 316, 318, 323, 324, 334–335, 335–
336, 351, 361, 362, 374, 375, 378, 380, 410, 414
Annunziata/Annunciada. See Congregation of
the Annunciation
Anti-Jesuitism, 11, 13–14
Aquaviva, Claudio, 34, 75–76, 86, 231–232, 246
Aristotle, 52, 144, 213, 255, 273, 310
Arnedo, Juan Antonio de: in Jiangxi Province,
171; on missionary life, 243, 361, 363
Arxó, José Ramón, 170, 192
Ataíde, Álvaro de, 28
Attimis, Tristano d’, 365
Augery, Humbert, 119, 128, 389–392, 397–399
Augustine, St., 390
Augustinians, 19, 180–181, 190
Ave Maria, 34, 140, 224, 225, 294, 340, 348, 391,
395
Barradas, António, 211
Barreto, Melchior Nunes, 29
Barros, António, 188, 191
Bartoli, Danielo, 234; Dell’Historia della
Compagnia de Giesu, 153
Batavia, 101, 119, 157
Bayard, Simon, 170, 197
Beauvollier, Antoine de, 188, 191
Black Legend, 17
Bogotá, 413
Book of Changes. See Five Classics
Book of Odes. See Five Classics
Borja, Francis, 383
Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne, 5
Bouvet, Joachim, 160, 161, 198
Boym, Michael, 112
Brancati, Francesco, 19, 127, 128, 148, 223, 277;
in Shanghai, 110, 114–115, 136, 270, 335–338,
347, 363, 380–381, 382–383; use of confraterni-
ties, 114–115, 335–338, 347, 380–381, 382–383;


Brancati, Francesco (continued)
notebooks of, 272–273, 275; Tianshen huike,
347
Brazil, 17, 55, 231, 407, 408, 412, 413, 415, 416–
417
Brito, Domingos de, 201, 202
Brotherhood of the Twelve Apostles, 116, 353
Brotherhoods. See Confraternities
Buddhism, 3, 44, 67, 90, 96, 288, 289, 326, 327;
attitudes of Jesuits regarding, 25, 33, 43, 60–
61, 68, 85, 106, 117, 207, 265, 296, 297, 298,
299–300, 301, 306, 309, 316–317, 318, 325, 345–
346, 360, 371, 410; clergy (bonzes), 25, 33, 43,
59, 60–61, 95, 97, 117, 145, 147, 191, 200, 207,
296, 297, 298, 325, 360, 410; clothing of
clergy, 25, 33, 43, 297; hui (associations) in, 53,
81, 368, 371, 373; imperial approbation of,
299–300; moral standards of, 299, 313; pagodes
(deities), 299, 301, 309, 312–313, 316–317, 322,
325, 359, 371; zhai (fasting), 132, 301–302, 309,
313; reincarnation, 313; Sanxue, 90
Buglio, Lodovico: in Sichuan Province, 99, 110;
in Peking, 116, 127, 128, 129, 137, 148, 150, 275,
277, 327, 403; translations into Chinese, 145,
147; Chinese language study, 272, 275
Caballero, Antonio de Santa Maria, 103, 105,
133, 217
Calendar, Catholic liturgical, 75, 166, 323, 331,
343, 391
Calendar Case, 125, 126–132, 134, 148, 200, 279
Calendar reform, 58, 84, 90, 100–101, 112, 132,
216, 419
Cambodia, 124
Canada. See New France
Candlemas, 117–118, 391
Canevari, Pietro, 89, 128, 217, 271
Canisius, Peter, 407
Canton, 7, 37, 40, 64, 68, 87, 111, 112, 123, 137,
157, 169, 180, 186, 200, 245, 403; Early Jesuits
in, 13, 29, 32, 45, 247; trade in, 25, 28, 29, 30,
31–32, 35, 113, 168, 245–246; Mendicant mis-
sionaries in, 102; confinement of Jesuits in,
125–126, 129–130, 132–136, 138, 148, 149, 154,
190, 199, 276, 279, 280, 338–339, 349, 353–354,
382, 384, 404–405; conference in, 132–133; cat-
echists in, 356
Cardoso, Francisco, 194, 195
Cardoso, Mateus, 412, 413, 414
Cartagena de Indias, 409
Carvalho, Valentim de, 75
Castiglione, Giuseppe, 195, 197
Castner, Kaspar, 195
Catechists: duties of, 21, 100, 140, 172, 330–331,
350–360, 362–363, 364–365, 385, 409, 414;
doctrine teaching by, 21, 350, 354, 355–356;
temporal coadjutors as, 40–41, 70, 75, 267–
268; baptism by, 76, 194, 359–360; confrater-
nities for, 116, 331, 352–353, 356, 357, 357–360,
362, 364, 383; proselytizing by, 135–136, 170,
173, 174, 350, 351, 357, 358–360, 385; and
churches, 176; relations with Jesuits, 351–354,
414; and Canton confinement, 353–354; wages
of, 356–357; and conversion, 357, 358–360, 385
Catholicism, early modern, 5–8, 70, 369; Catho-
lic Reformation, 6–7, 10, 368; Counter-Refor-
mation, 6, 8, 10–12, 294; papal primacy, 6, 10,
11–12, 105, 165, 185, 186–187, 197; lay piety in
Europe, 20, 21, 293–294, 318, 329–330, 333,
340, 353, 364, 367, 368, 369
Cattaneo, Lazzaro, 40, 46, 51, 66, 230, 249–250,
375, 408; in Shaozhou, 40; in Nanjing, 46;
first visit to Shanghai, 59–60, 295–296, 298;
education of, 230; study of Chinese language
by, 249–250, 252, 408
Celibacy, 314
Cespedes, Gregorio de, 99
Changshu, 99–100, 116, 122, 136, 170–171, 201,
221, 318–319, 347, 349–350, 353, 356–357, 384
Chastity, vows of, 40, 149
Chen Mao, 199
Children, 353, 412; teaching doctrine to, 82, 115–
116, 132, 142, 224, 308–309, 343–344, 346–350,
354–355, 360, 362, 364, 383; foundlings, 176,
383, 384; infants, 202, 362, 384
Chile, 408
Chinese Christians, 7, 19, 20–21; number of, 4,
28, 34, 41, 47, 52, 53–54, 55–56, 59, 62–63, 76–
77, 83–85, 114, 124, 171–172, 176; women
among, 6, 47, 81–82, 132, 140, 173, 201, 237,
295, 308, 317, 333–334, 338–339, 351, 356, 363–
364, 375, 379–380, 382, 384, 386, 387, 412;
elites among, 25, 35, 43, 47–48, 50–51, 52, 53,
54, 57, 58–59, 76, 78, 87, 90–91, 100, 104–107,
112, 117, 147, 195, 199, 244, 252, 258, 266, 276,
280, 289, 290, 291–292, 293–294, 297–298,
324–325, 343, 351, 404; plebeians among, 28,
34, 35, 47–48, 91, 94–98, 201–202, 203, 216,
225, 258, 289–290, 303, 332, 384; identity for-
mation, 289, 315–316, 322, 327, 406; rural vs.
urban, 367, 388. See also Chinese Rites; Con-
fraternities; Conversion; Li Zhizao; Piety, lay;
Xu Guangqi; Yang Tingyun
Chinese clergy, 135, 149–151, 190, 192, 197, 201,
280; attitudes of Jesuits toward, 126, 142–145,
147–151, 158, 357, 419; number of priests, 177
482
E Index


Chinese education methods, 31, 245, 246, 247–
248, 249, 263
Chinese Jews, 286, 297
Chinese language: study of, 4, 8, 20, 25, 30–31,
32, 34, 41, 42, 55, 75, 78, 214–215, 243–286,
408; sources on Jesuits in, 16, 17; Cantonese
dialect, 31, 35; Mandarin/Nanjing dialect
(guanhua), 31, 95, 244, 246–247, 257, 258–259,
260–262, 263, 271–272, 273, 281, 282–285,
303, 408, 409; Terms Controversy, 85–89, 133,
137, 267–268, 301, 416; regional dialects, 95,
258–259, 271–272, 303, 351–352, 409; instruc-
tion by Chinese masters, 246, 249, 252, 257,
265–267, 275, 280, 281, 408; tonal nature of,
249, 250, 260–261, 282; instruction by coad-
jutors, 251–252, 257, 260, 267–268, 271, 272,
273, 275, 277, 280; written language, 255, 259,
261, 263, 387, 416; ratio studiorum for Vice-
Province of China, 256–263, 272–273, 275–
276, 281; instruction by “Portuguese” master,
260, 263–264, 273; and civil service examina-
tions, 266–267; instruction by Chinese clergy,
280; in doctrine pamphlets, 294–295. See also
Publications by Jesuits
Chinese Muslims, 63, 127, 132, 286, 297
Chinese New Year, 117, 266, 273
Chinese Rites, 152, 187–188; Jesuit attitudes to-
ward, 11, 14, 44, 76, 104–107, 119, 122, 133,
157, 165, 184, 186, 192–193, 286, 345; and Men-
dicants, 104–105, 106–107, 185, 190; papal
policies regarding, 119, 122, 133, 165, 185, 188–
189, 192, 193, 197, 200; and Vicars Apostolic,
157, 181, 184, 185–186, 187, 190; and Kangxi
emperor, 188, 189–191, 192–193, 200
Chongming Island, 141, 170, 177
Chongzhen emperor, 92, 93, 100–101, 108, 112,
270
Christianity: Incarnation, 14, 305, 307, 356, 395–
396, 411; Passion of Christ, 14, 307, 341, 352,
356, 367, 375, 377, 382, 385, 395–396, 397, 398,
411, 414; Ten Commandments, 34, 97, 137,
276, 293, 294, 300, 308, 315, 324, 335, 340,
348, 349, 358, 398, 410; as Tianzhu jiao, 47,
67, 75, 78, 82, 83, 93, 95–96; mass, 81, 82, 96,
100, 116, 134, 139, 147, 151, 172, 173, 176, 213,
215, 218, 235, 236, 238, 293, 323, 333, 326, 331,
334, 336, 352, 361, 363, 364, 367, 372, 375, 377,
381, 382, 386, 387, 389, 392, 393, 395, 396, 399,
405, 414; exorcisms, 96, 97, 173–174; passed
on through kinship networks, 115–116, 340,
346, 399; public image/visibility of, 116–117,
192–193, 203, 280–281, 285, 292, 297–298,
326, 360, 408; the Trinity, 139, 295, 340, 356,
411–412; . See also Catholicism, early modern;
Sacraments
Churches, 1, 100, 109, 116–117, 123, 134, 170–171,
176, 178, 199–200, 323–327, 330, 331, 334, 335,
337–338, 350, 363–364, 366–367, 369; São
Paulo in Macau, 1, 39, 419; Yanping church,
117; Eastern Church (Dongtang/Church of
Saint Joseph) in Peking, 134, 202, 327, 385;
Church of the Savior in Shanghai, 140, 172,
336, 350; Southern Church (Nantang) in Pe-
king, 195, 196; conversion of temples into,
325–326; Hangzhou church, 366–367, 369,
389, 401; Chapels, 176, 324, 334–335, 336, 337–
338, 405; Oratories, 115, 141, 173, 174, 176, 324,
333, 334, 335, 337–338, 363, 364; for female
Christians called Shengmu tang (Chapels of
the Holy Mother), 237, 334, 364
Cicero, Alessandro, 182, 186
Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 42, 212, 214, 255
Civil service examinations, 43, 58, 266–267, 287
Clavius, Christopher, 52
Clement XI, 185–186, 188–189, 192, 193, 197, 200
Coadjutors, spiritual, 149, 213
Coadjutors, temporal, 45, 49, 60, 68–69, 70–71,
110, 124, 142, 190, 212, 220, 236, 237, 261, 293,
350, 351, 353, 373; as catechists, 40–41, 75,
267–268; number in mission, 77, 89, 110, 113,
118, 123, 138, 163, 174, 177, 270, 328; as lan-
guage instructors, 149, 251–252, 257, 260,
267–268, 271, 272, 273, 275, 277, 280
Cochin, 31, 33, 221
Cochin China, 124, 156
Colleges, 4, 171, 199, 408, 416; Colégio de São
Paulo in Goa, 33, 213, 220, 231, 241; Colégio
de Madre de Deus in Macau, 37, 39, 54, 55,
65, 71, 86, 101, 124, 144, 215, 220, 221, 250–
251, 257; residences as, 174–175, 178; Colégio
do Espirito Santo at Évora, 207–208, 211–212,
217–218, 220, 222, 372; College of Coimbra,
211–212, 220, 222, 226–227, 228, 230, 232, 241,
242, 347; confraternities in, 215, 329, 333, 368,
371–372; Colégio de Santo Antão in Lisbon,
225–226. See also Education of Jesuits
Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis, 412
Concubines, 48, 300, 315
Confraternities, 110, 133–134, 164; devotional
confraternities, 21, 53, 70, 141, 330, 333–341,
342–346, 349, 358, 363, 364–365, 367–373, 374,
375, 377–379, 380–381, 382–399, 401, 413;
charitable confraternities, 21, 81, 171, 367, 373,
374, 377–379, 384, 392–395; penitential con-
fraternities, 21, 141, 171, 367, 375, 377, 382–
383, 384, 385, 388, 395–399, 414; in Peking, 70,
483
Index F


Confraternities (continued)
370, 371, 372–374, 378–379, 381–384, 384, 385–
388, 393, 401; in Shanghai, 100, 114–115, 335–
338, 341, 347, 350, 354–355, 356, 360, 363, 375,
382–383, 384, 396; Chinese leaders (huizhang),
114, 135, 335, 336, 341, 343–345, 350–351, 375,
376, 388, 390–391, 414; and Brancati, 114–115,
335–338, 347, 380–381, 382–383; for catechists,
116, 331, 352–353, 356, 357, 357–360, 362, 364,
383; in Songjiang, 142, 362, 384; in Jesuit col-
leges, 215, 329, 333, 368, 371–372; in Europe
vs. China, 329–330, 340, 343, 344, 371–373,
373, 381, 382–383, 384–388, 390–391, 395, 401;
organizational confraternities (Shengmu hui),
330, 334–341, 342–346, 349, 358, 363, 364–365,
367, 368, 375, 377, 379, 383, 388–389, 391, 413;
Marian sodalities (Shengmu hui), 330, 333–341,
342–346, 349, 358, 363, 364–365, 367–373, 375,
377, 380–381, 382–392, 394, 395, 398, 401, 413;
statutes of, 333, 339–341, 342–346, 358–360,
370, 371–372, 381, 386, 388–399; for women,
333–334, 338–339, 375, 379–380, 381, 384, 386,
387; during Canton confinement, 338–339,
382, 384; occupational confraternities, 343,
368, 372; and funerals, 344–346, 358, 367, 370,
374, 377, 378, 379, 385, 393, 394, 395, 401;
Confraternities of the Angels (Tianshen hui),
346–350, 364, 383; in Hangzhou, 375, 381,
389–392, 397–399; and saints of the month,
383, 386, 392, 395
Confraternities of Saint Francis Xavier (Sheng
Fangjige hui), 354, 356, 357–360, 362
Confraternity of Saint Ignatius Loyola, 355
Confraternity of Souls, 385
Confucian philosophy, 90–91, , 316; attitudes of
Jesuits regarding, 8, 11, 13, 20, 41, 44, 46–47,
61, 67, 76, 78, 81, 85, 106–107, 134, 152, 243–
245, 255, 263–268, 284–286, 297, 299, 377–
378, 392–395, 408, 410; ratio studiorum in
Vice-Province of China, 263–268, 272–273,
275–276; moral standards in, 299, 370–371,
377–378, 392–393, 410; filial piety, 300, 344–
345, 396; zhai (fasting), 301–302; Renhui (be-
nevolent societies), 370–371, 373, 377–378,
392–394; and self-mortification, 396; as state
orthodoxy, 67, 68, 71, 107, 127, 167, 266, 297;
Sanxue, 90. See also Chinese Rites, Four Books
Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, 152, 277
Congregation of Saint Joseph, 385
Congregation of the Annunciation (Shengmu
lingbao hui), 171, 333, 340, 371–372, 383, 385–
388, 389, 390, 401
Conversion: attitudes of Jesuits regarding, 6–7,
15, 34–35, 44, 46–48, 50–51, 53–54, 55–56, 58,
59, 60, 65, 70, 75–77, 81–82, 359–360; of ple-
beians, 8, 28, 34, 35, 47–48, 91, 94–98, 100,
201, 203, 258, 289–290, 303; of elite Chinese,
25, 35, 43, 47–48, 50, 52, 53, 54, 57, 58–59, 78,
87, 90–91, 100, 104, 112, 147, 195, 199, 244,
252, 258, 276, 280, 289, 290, 291–292, 297–
298; tallies of conversions, 28, 34, 41, 47, 52,
53–54, 55–56, 59, 62–63, 76–77, 83–85, 89,
94–95, 98, 110, 114–115, 136, 170–171, 176, 202,
315; number of conversions in Japan vs.
China, 34, 53, 62. See also Chinese Christians;
Evangelization strategies
Coroa of Paternosters, 398
Corporal mortification, 338, 396–397, 414–415;
flagellation, 115, 140, 367, 372, 375, 380, 382,
385, 396, 397, 398, 414–415; wearing of cilice,
382, 398, 414
Costa, Inácio da, 89, 322, 337; in Shanxi Prov-
ince, 99; at Nanchang, 123; at Canton, 128,
129; teaching experience of, 221; at Jianchang,
271; as Vice-Provincial, 277, 279; on holy
envy, 379–380; at Xi’an, 109, 379–380, 396
Council of Trent, 10, 11, 105, 139, 294
Counter-Reformation, 6, 8, 10–12
Couplet, Philippe, 119, 128, 150, 241; as procura-
tor, 140, 151–152, 158, 162, 232, 234; biography
of Candida Xu by, 140, 341, 350; education of,
214, 277; Tabula Chronologica Monarchiae
Sinicae, 277; and confraternities, 354–355,
360, 383, 384, 396
Credo, 294, 307, 348, 392
Cruz, Tomé da, 197, 201
Cum Deus optimus, 185, 188–189
Cunha, Simão da, 73, 118, 328; on mission
finances, 114; in Fujian Province, 114, 115, 117,
271, 317, 318, 326, 348–349; teaching experi-
ence of, 221, 225–226, 271; on Tianshen hui in
Yanping, 348–349; charitable confraternities
created by, 379; female confraternity adminis-
tered by, 380
Daoism, 90, 95, 288, 289, 322, 327, 368; clergy
(daoshi, tausus), 59, 60–61, 97, 117, 137, 145,
191, 296, 297, 298, 360, 410; attitudes of Jesu-
its regarding, 60–61, 117, 265, 296, 298, 299,
301, 306, 309, 316–317, 318, 345–346, 360;
Sanxue, 90
Della Chiesa, Bernardino, 170, 194–195
Demoustier, Adrien, 222
Devotional objects: rosaries, 81, 83, 96, 97, 108–
109, 117, 140, 172, 224, 238, 293, 305, 308, 318,
319, 322, 325, 340, 348, 350, 374, 386, 387, 392,
484
E Index


393, 395, 398; used in evangelization, 96, 97–
98, 293, 305, 308, 318, 319, 321–323, 344; ve-
ronicas, 96, 136, 166, 305, 318, 348; nominas,
96, 136, 224, 305, 308, 318, 319, 322; Agnus
Dei pendants, 96, 136, 140, 305, 318, 319, 350;
Holy water, 96–97, 140, 147, 319, 346, 348,
351, 354, 359; devotional images, 140, 293, 294,
305, 306–307, 318, 348, 350, 354; and forma-
tion of Christian identity, 194, 315; for chil-
dren, 347, 349–350; crosses, 350
Dias, Manuel, the elder, 77, 81; as Visitor, 53–54,
99, 272; on comets of 1618, 71, 73; on recruit-
ment of missionaries, 79–80; voyage on the
Santiago, 241; and Chinese language studies,
256–257, 260, 261, 263, 264, 265–266, 268; at
Nanchang, 287, 331–332
Dias, Manuel, the younger, 80, 94, 113, 118, 257,
303, 328; on temporal coadjutors, 70; as Vice-
Provincial, 74, 78, 89, 103, 276; Tianwen lüe
(Catechism on the Heavens), 75; teaching ex-
perience, 221; Tang jingjiao beisong
zhengquan, 276; Tianzhu shengjiao shijie
zhiquan, 276; as Visitor, 276; on stele in
Xi’an, 276, 419
Diestel, Bernhard, 119
Doctrine of the Mean. see Four Books
Doctrine teaching, 47, 97–98, 135, 139, 141–142,
164, 173, 215, 222, 223, 262, 331, 352, 406; by
catechists, 21, 346, 350, 354, 355–356; on sea
voyages, 235, 236, 237, 238; by temporal coad-
jutors, 268; doctrine manuals, 31, 81, 87, 88,
294–295, 298, 305, 308, 311, 315, 347, 412. See
also Children, doctrine teaching to
Documents Classic. See Five Classics
Dominicans, 7, 19, 81, 137, 180–181; in Fujian
Province, 102, 132, 155, 162, 169, 177, 181, 192,
200, 259; relations with Jesuits, 102–107, 119,
132–133, 153–154, 155, 162–163, 164, 169, 177,
185, 259, 418; and Chinese Rites, 104–105,
106–107, 185, 190; and Calendar Case, 128,
129, 130, 132; exile from China, 190; confra-
ternities founded by, 340
Donglin Academy, 82, 374
Duan Gun, Pedro, 81
Duarte, João, 200, 202
Duilian, 322
Dutch East India Company, 101, 113, 119
Edicts of Toleration, 164–169, 179–180, 184, 191,
285
Education of Jesuits, 20, 21, 207–242; and
Christian humanism, 7–8; rhetoric, 8, 33, 40,
95, 211, 212, 214, 215, 221, 255, 309–310, 332,
412; speculative theology, 8, 40, 144, 213, 215,
219, 230, 240, 257, 276, 309–310; moral theol-
ogy, 11, 40, 210, 213, 215, 257, 309–310; astron-
omy, 52, 213, 215–217, 240; natural philoso-
phy, 52, 213, 215–216; mathematics, 52, 215–
216, 222; logic, 63, 212–213, 309–310; and Je-
suit identity, 143–145; Latin, 33, 144, 145, 151,
211, 212, 214, 244, 253, 259, 263, 264; teaching
experience, 210, 213, 219, 220, 221–223, 226,
332, 346–347, 369; humanities, 212, 214–215,
217, 221, 222, 232, 255, 264; Greek grammar,
212, 214–215, 244, 253; Greek philosophy, 212–
213, 215, 221, 222, 232, 255; Arts Course, 212–
214; Ratio Studiorum, 212–214, 223; ; Euclid-
ean geometry, 213, 216, 255; Hebrew grammar,
214–215, 253; “pious competition”, 215, 223,
332, 347, 369, 383, 398; science, 215–217; in
pastoral techniques, 220; uniformity in, 412.
See also Colleges
Emperors: relations with Jesuits, 7, 9, 13–14, 41–
42, 45–46, 49, 68, 73, 91, 93, 105, 116–117, 127,
166, 187, 190, 286, 324, 326, 327, 341, 392,
404, 417, 418; Hongguang emperor, 111;
Longwu emperor, 111, 112; Yongli emperor,
111, 112, 195; Qianlong emperor, 197; Huan
emperor, 300. See also Kangxi emperor; Ming
China; Qing China; Shunzhi emperor;
Tianqi emperor; Chongzhen emperor; Wanli
emperor; Yongzheng emperor
England, 160; James II, 152
Epictetus, 52
Ethiopia, 407
Evangelization strategies, 7, 21, 75–76, 132, 277,
287–327, 351, 407, 411; use of science, 15–16,
34, 46, 52, 75–76, 287–288, 411; intellectual
interaction with elites, 34, 44, 46–48, 58, 59,
60, 67, 77–78, 90, 257–258, 284–285, 287–
288, 289, 290–292, 293–294, 332–333, 368,
408; in rural areas, 93–98; use of catechists,
135–136, 170, 173, 350, 351, 357, 358–360, 385;
role of residences in, 291–293; destruction of
pagodes, 316–317; in China vs. other missions,
406, 407–408
Évora: Colégio do Espirito Santo at, 115, 162,
207–208, 211–212, 217–218, 220, 222, 232, 372
Examination of conscience, 238, 380, 391, 394,
395
Ex illa die, 197
Faber, Étienne, 19, 89, 118, 203, 228, 271; in
Shanxi Province, 95; confraternities founded
by, 115; in Shaaxi Province, 115, 306; at Xi’an,
115, 396; on sea voyage, 233–234
485
Index F


Faglia, Antonio, 280
Fangsheng hui (Association for Releasing Life),
371
Fan Shouyi, Luigi, 192, 201
Fasting, 115, 132, 301–302, 323, 371, 372, 380, 382,
396, 398, 415
Faure, Jacques le, 119, 127, 128; in Jiangxi Prov-
ince, 123, 277, 325, 327; teaching experience
of, 221
Feast days, 1, 167, 238, 259, 317, 323, 331, 340,
343, 350, 355, 370, 389, 392; Marian feasts, 53,
117–118, 370, 386, 391–392
Fernandes, António, 277
Fernandes, Sebastião, 40–41, 45, 49, 251–252
Ferrão, André, 241–242
Ferreira, Francisco, 271, 272
Ferreira, Gaspar, 55, 71, 113, 257, 277, 323; in
Jiangxi Province, 83, 89, 94–95, 97, 271, 272,
307, 334, 374, 389; teaching experience of,
221, 271, 272, 307; policies on confraternities,
374, 389
Ferreira, Manuel, 411
Figueira, Luís, 416–417
Figueiredo, Rodrigo de, 19, 73, 83, 87, 147, 303;
on Shangdi, 87; at Kaifeng, 100, 109, 123, 271,
352; confraternity for catechists created by,
100, 352–353; death of, 109; education of,
220–221, 232; teaching experience of, 271;
evangelization in Ningbo, 303, 305–316, 317,
411; penitential confraternity administered by,
375, 377
Figurism, 198
Filippucci, Francesco Saverio, 150, 151, 159, 160,
161–162, 217; as Alessandro, 227
Fishery Coast, 2, 31, 417
Five Classics (Wujing), 253, 264; Book of Changes
(Yijing), 198, 253, 264, 265, 273; Book of Odes,
253, 264; Documents Classic, 253, 264, 265,
266, 267, 273, 277; Spring and Autumn An-
nals, 253, 264; Record of Rites, 253, 264
Flagellation. See Corporal Mortification
Fonseca, Francisco de, 193
Fontaney, Jean de, 159–160, 161, 183, 184, 387–
388
Fortune-telling, 299, 300
Four Books (Sishu), 250, 252, 253, 263–268, 272–
273, 275–276, 277, 279, 281, 284; Analects,
134, 253, 264, 273, 279; Great Learning, 253,
264, 273, 275, 279, 284–285; Doctrine of the
Mean, 253, 264, 273, 279, 284; Mencius, 253,
264, 273
France, 10, 105–106, 119, 126, 148, 183; Louis
XIV, 5, 10, 106, 152, 154, 155–156, 158; relations
with Spain, 154; relations with Portugal, 154,
155–156, 158–159, 162, 184
Franchi, Girolamo, 194
Franciscans, 7, 19, 128; in Fujian Province, 102,
103–104, 155, 162, 169, 181, 217, 259; relations
with Jesuits, 102–107, 119, 132–133, 153–154,
155, 162–163, 164, 169, 185, 189, 259, 418; and
Chinese Rites, 104–105, 106–107, 185, 190; in
Guangdong Province, 180–181; exile from
China, 190; in Shandong Province, 159, 177,
194
French Jesuits, 183, 188, 193, 195, 200, 221; rela-
tions with “Portuguese” Jesuits, 10, 19, 126,
158–161, 163, 164, 182–184, 185, 197–198, 231,
281; relations with Kangxi emperor, 159, 160,
161, 167, 168, 184, 187, 190, 198
Fróis, João, 73, 303, 334; Tongku jingji, 323
Fujian Province, 4, 106, 114, 116, 128, 163, 180,
183, 199, 200, 259, 276, 291, 317, 319, 379;
coastal areas of, 19, 96, 102, 103, 109, 115, 169,
180, 249; Fuzhou, 78, 89, 90, 94, 103, 171,
177, 184, 271, 282, 388, 389, 401; Quanzhou,
95; Franciscans in, 102, 103–104, 155, 162, 169,
181, 217, 259; Dominicans in, 102, 132, 155,
162, 169, 177, 181, 192, 200, 259; Fu’an, 103,
105, 132, 135, 177; Southern Ming in, 111, 112;
Jianning, 115; Yanping, 115, 117, 123, 348–349,
380, 389; Shaowu, 115, 123; Dingzhou, 115, 123,
348; Vicars Apostolic in, 157–158, 181, 185;
Wuyi Mountains, 326
Funerals and confraternities, 81, 344–346, 358,
367, 370, 374, 377, 378, 379, 385, 393, 394,
395, 401
Furtado, Francisco, 73, 80, 118, 203, 269, 322,
373–374; as Vice-Provincial, 98–102, 103–104,
107, 109, 272, 273; on Manchus, 112; teaching
experience of, 271; as Visitor, 338, 348; peni-
tential confraternity instituted by, 375
Gabiani, Giandomenico, 118, 150, 151, 160;
Incrementa Sinicae Ecclesiae Tartaris
Oppugnatae, 154
Galileo Galilei: Sidereus Nuncius, 75
Gama, Luís da, 133, 135
Ganzhou, 123, 174–175, 178, 277, 327, 405
Gerbillon, Jean-François, 160, 161, 166–167, 183–
184
Germany, 161, 182
Girão, João Rodrigues, 237, 238
Goa, 4, 30, 42, 102, 113, 134, 140, 145, 155, 235,
238, 310, 321, 366; as Jesuit staging post, 4,
102, 138, 158, 232, 240–241, 321; archbishop of,
12, 154, 156, 157–158, 185–186, 189, 197; Prov-
486
E Index


ince of, 18, 179, 194, 236; China Jesuits in, 31,
33, 221, 222, 228, 232, 310; Colégio de São
Paulo, 33, 115, 213, 220, 231, 241; overland
route to China from, 119, 241
Gobet, Louis, 119
God: Chinese terms for, 85–89, 133, 137, 267–
268, 286; and evil, 287–288 as Creator, 45, 96,
283, 288, 307, 310–312, 313–314, 411
Gomes, Manuel, 110, 271, 272, 273, 275, 277
González, Tirso, 162, 183–184
Gouvea, António de, 148, 223, 232, 318–319, 323,
328; on Manchus, 92, 112–113; in Wuchang,
99, 109; education of, 208–209; teaching ex-
perience of, 221; on confraternities, 377–378,
389 392–393; in Fujian Province, 115, 128
Gozani, Giampaolo, 171, 184, 197, 200, 202–203
Granada, Luís de, 5, 81; Contemptus Mundi,
276
Grassetti, Tranquillo, 89, 110, 271
Gravina, Girolamo, 116, 272, 353
Great Learning. See Four Books
Grelon, Adrien, 128; Histoire de la Chine sous la
Domination des Tartares, 154
Grimaldi, Claudio Filippo, 137, 150, 184, 188; as
procurator, 162
Gruber, Johann, 119
Guangdong Province, 34, 35, 43, 47, 71, 112, 123,
124, 125–126, 136, 153, 180, 181, 245–246, 251,
291–292, 298; mandarins in, 25, 29–30, 31, 32,
36, 37, 40, 45, 64, 71, 130, 199; Nanxiong, 64,
65, 84, 292; Franciscans in, 155, 180–181; Do-
minicans in, 192. See also Shaozhou;
Zhaoqing
Guangren hui (Association for Spreading Benev-
olence), 370
Guangxi Province, 36, 64, 98, 112, 124, 170;
Guilin, 200
Guanxi, 34
Guizhou Province, 98, 176
Hainan Island, 124, 357
Halde, Jean-Baptiste du, 193
Han dynasty, 299–300
Hangzhou, 70–71, 78–79, 85, 86, 92, 150, 159,
167, 173, 200, 253, 268, 308, 419; and Yang
Tingyun, 60, 69, 77, 90, 300, 392–393; resi-
dence in, 61, 89, 90, 174–175, 177, 178, 269,
270, 275, 303, 305, 327, 417; opposition to Je-
suits in, 164, 165–166; confraternities in, 334,
338, 375, 381, 389–393, 397–399; catechists in,
351; church in, 327, 366–367, 369, 389, 401
Han Lin, Tomé, 99
Henan Province, 51, 160; Kaifeng, 78, 89, 100,
109, 123, 124, 177, 183, 200, 221, 271, 352, 375;
Luoyang, 299–300
Henriques, António José, 365
Herdtrich, Christian, 123, 150
Hinderer, Romain, 195, 201, 202
Hinduism, 411
Ho, Francisco Xavier Rosario, 170, 197, 201
Holy Congregation for the Propagation of the
Faith (Propaganda Fide), 12, 156, 158, 162,
180–181, 185
Holy Office of the Inquisition. See Inquisition
Huai’an, 122, 128, 177, 322
Huangyu quanlan tu (Complete Map of the
Empire), 195
Huguang Province, 36, 71, 110, 173, 177, 183,
200, 202, 379; Wuchang, 99, 109, 123, 147,
170; Changsha, 170; Xiangyang, 170
Hui (associations), 82, 83, 224, 329, 337, 399,
413; in Buddhism, 81, 368, 371, 373; Ming pol-
icies toward, 332, 374; among literati, 370–
371, 377–378. See also Confraternities
Imperial Astronomical Bureau, 13–14, 15, 91, 150,
175, 178, 200, 277; Schall at, 112; and Calen-
dar Case, 126–132, 134; Verbiest at, 158, 159,
217
Index of Prohibited Books, 10
India, 2, 3, 12, 30, 31, 33, 36, 37, 79, 84, 99, 113,
119, 124, 134, 138, 144, 156, 178, 179, 194, 213,
219, 222, 223, 226, 227, 231, 232, 234, 235, 236,
240, 241, 300, 319, 321, 406, 407, 408, 410,
411, 412, 414, 417
Indipetae, 222, 227, 228, 230, 232
Indonesian archipelago, 2, 407, 410, 411
Indulgences, 171, 224, 225, 385, 387, 390
Innocent X, 112
Innocent XI, 152, 185
Inquisition, 10, 11, 76, 174, 185, 418
Institutional/corporate identity of Society of Je-
sus, 6, 8–9, 103, 143, 144, 145, 147, 218, 406–
407
Intorcetta, Prospero, 128; at Jianchang, 123, 277;
as procurator, 130, 138, 148–149, 150, 162;
Sapientia Sinica, 134, 279; Sinarum Scientia
Politico-Moralis, 134, 279; as Vice-Provincial,
150, 151, 159; Compendiosa Narratione dello
Stato della Missione Cinesi dall’anno 1581 fin
all’anno 1669, 154; at Hangzhou, 165–166, 167;
relationship with Kangxi emperor, 167, 168;
Chinese language study of, 277, 279
Islam, 11, 411
Italy, 6, 9, 30, 31, 36–37, 45, 73, 148, 152, 161, 182,
192, 197, 232, 249
487
Index F


Jansenists, 11, 14, 106, 183, 185, 192
Japan, 1, 2, 12, 17, 168, 245, 407, 410, 415; Hon-
shu, 2; Kyushu, 2, 28, 30, 99, 296, 413; vs.
China, 34, 37, 40, 53, 62, 86, 142–143; Naga-
saki, 40, 65, 232, 251, 418; Tokugawa era per-
secutions, 54–55, 65–66, 69, 74, 86, 101, 102,
182, 228, 413; trade with Portugal, 101, 321,
325, 417. See also Province of Japan
Jeune, Paul le, 409, 415, 417–418
Jiading, 78, 89, 269–270, 303
Jiading Conference, 87
Jiangnan region, 46, 60–61, 63, 67, 69, 77, 78,
82, 94, 114–115, 116, 123, 135, 169, 200, 201,
258, 265, 277, 298, 362, 365; Jiading, 78, 89,
269–270, 303; Jesuit residences in, 84, 89, 121,
124, 183, 269; Huai’an, 122, 128, 177;
Yangzhou, 122, 327, 347; number of Chinese
Christians in, 124, 162, 176–177, 337, 354;
Suzhou, 128, 170, 201, 341, 365, 384; Taicang,
173. See also Hangzhou; Shanghai, Jiading,
Changshu, Songjiang
Jiangxi Province, 36, 43, 64, 128, 141, 166, 177,
183, 198, 276, 292, 317, 374; Nanchang, 45–47,
50, 54, 84, 89, 110, 123, 171, 270, 271, 272, 287,
331–332, 379; Jianchang, 71, 78, 83, 84, 89, 94–
95, 97, 123, 272, 334, 384, 389; Ganzhou, 123,
174–175, 178, 277, 327, 405; Dominicans in,
155, 169; Franciscans in, 155, 169, 181; Ji’an,
325; Nanfeng, 343
Jing Tian tablets, 137, 185, 187, 286
João III, 2, 42
João IV, 113, 241
João V, 197, 203
Jorge, Manuel, 118, 125, 128, 129, 328–329
Jorge, Marcos, 308, 412
Joseph, St., 133, 167, 341, 385
Journey to the West, (Xiyou ji), 3–4, 13
Judaism, 11, 286, 297
Kangxi emperor, 126, 129, 136–138, 157, 182, 281,
403; and Tournon legation, 4, 12, 186–188,
191–192, 198–199, 286; Oboi regents, 127–128,
134; relationship with Verbiest, 132, 136; rela-
tions with French Jesuits, 159, 160, 161, 167,
168, 184, 187, 190, 198; Edicts of Toleration,
164–169, 179–180, 184, 191, 285; and the piao,
165, 188, 189–191, 192–193, 200; and Chinese
Rites, 187–188, 189–190; death of, 197
Kino, Eusebio Francisco, 408–409
Kircher, Athanasius: China Illustrata,
153
Koffler, Andreas Xavier, 112
Kögler, Ignatius, 200
Kongo, 407, 412, 413; Garcia I, 414
Korea, 40, 99, 279
Lagea, Francisco de, 271
Lantern Festival, 117–118
Laos, 124
Laurifice, Emanuele, 142, 362
Learning from Heaven. See Tianxue
Le Comte, Louis, 160; Nouveaux Mémoires sur
l’État Présent de la Chine, 182–183
Leitão, António, 252
Leunis, Jan, 371
Li, Lucas, 53, 370, 371, 372–373, 379
Li, Paulo, 351
Li Zhizao, Leão, 52, 58–59, 60, 69, 80, 300, 419;
; and calendar reform, 77–78, 84; and Terms
Controversy, 87; death of, 90; donations by,
100; relatives of, 104
Li Zicheng, 109
Li Zubai, 128, 129
Liaodong, 71, 98
Lisbon, 17, 102,118, 119, 140, 154, 155, 156, 193,
211, 289, 347, 403, 412; Real Academia da
História, 18; Biblioteca da Ajuda, 18–19;
Colégio de Santo Antão, 225–226; embarka-
tion from, 158, 162, 208, 222, 226, 230, 232,
233, 237, 238, 241, 405
Litanies, of the Angels, 348; of the Passion, 323,
367, 377, 385; of the Saints, 139, 238, 323, 341,
392; of the Virgin, 172, 225, 235, 238, 323, 336,
348, 386, 395
Literati: relations with Jesuits, 28, 31, 33, 34, 35,
42–44, 46, 49–50, 50–51, 52, 56, 57–61, 66–71,
73, 74, 78, 80, 85, 87, 90–91, 94, 97, 99, 100,
106–107, 117, 144–145, 150, 191, 203, 216, 243,
244, 253, 257–259, 262, 265–267, 277, 284–
285, 289, 290, 291–292, 293–294, 297–298,
300–301, 306, 312, 356, 368, 408, 410; factions
among, 37, 67, 77, 82, 374; conversions
among, 43, 47–48, 105, 117, 147, 149, 244, 258,
266, 280, 289, 290, 291–292, 293–294, 297–
298, 324–325, 343, 355; as catechists, 356; as
confraternity members, 360, 392, 393; hui (as-
sociations) among, 370–371, 377–378
Liu Yunde, Bras Verbiest, 150–151
Lobo, Inácio, 94, 96, 223, 271, 306
Longobardo, Niccolò, 51, 80, 81, 113, 118, 203,
257, 335, 373; in Shaozhou, 47, 50, 63–64, 252,
301; on Chinese converts, 48; as mission su-
perior, 61–62, 63–64, 65–66, 69, 74, 75, 103,
216, 298, 407; in Peking, 64, 78, 94; during
Terms Controversy, 87, 88, 133; in Shandong
Province, 99; teaching experience of, 221, 252;
488
E Index


evangelization strategies of, 293–295, 298–
300, 303, 312–313, 407
Louis XIV, 5, 10, 106, 152, 154, 155–156, 158, 183
Loyola, Ignatius, 2, 6, 207, 219, 235, 319, 407,
419; Spiritual Exercises, 292, 370
Lubelli, Andrea, 356
Luo Wenzao, Gregorio López, 135, 149, 150, 353,
404
Macau, 36, 84, 153, 157, 189, 321; São Paulo,
church of, 1, 39, 419; processions in, 1–2, 168–
169; Jesuits in, 4, 6, 25, 29–31, 33, 34, 43, 53–
54, 63, 69, 71, 73, 74, 104, 112, 118, 123, 124,
143, 145, 148, 149, 150, 158, 183, 209, 216, 219,
245–247, 253, 268; founding of, 29–30; mer-
chants in, 29–30, 32, 63–64, 71, 101, 246–247,
325, 403; Chinese attitudes regarding, 35, 37,
40, 68, 130, 251; Colégio de Madre de Deus,
37, 39, 54, 55, 65, 71, 86, 101, 124, 144, 215,
220, 221, 250–251, 257; temporal coadjutors
from, 40–41, 143, 252, 280; dependence of
China Jesuits on, 63–65, 101, 113, 140, 163,
178, 251–252, 325, 417; bishopric of, 183
Macret, Germain, 130
Magalhães, Gabriel de, 233; in Sichuan Prov-
ince, 110; in Peking, 116, 123, 127, 128, 129,
148, 327, 403; death of, 137–138; Nouvelle Re-
lation de la Chine, 154; teaching experience of,
221; on confraternities, 378, 381–382, 393
Maigrot, Charles, 181, 185, 187, 188
Malacca, 2, 28, 29, 101, 321
Manchuria, 98, 125
Manchus, 110, 116, 195, 199, 211, 403; relations
with Ming China, 71, 78, 84, 85, 91, 92–93,
94, 101, 109, 112, 153, 251, 416; language of,
281, 387. See also Qing China
Mandarins, 92, 195, 200, 322, 332, 404; relations
with Jesuits, 7, 8, 19, 25, 32–33, 34, 35–36, 37,
41–45, 46, 47–48, 49–51, 52, 57–62, 63, 64,
66–71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77–78, 80, 84, 86, 87,
90, 98, 99–100, 123, 123–124, 126, 128, 130,
134, 136, 147, 159, 164, 165–166, 168, 179, 190–
191, 199, 200, 203, 251, 258–259, 281, 291,
297–298, 327, 418–419; clothing of, 43–45,
46–47, 78, 95, 293; conversions among, 47–
48, 50–51, 52, 53, 54, 57, 58–59, 76, 78, 90–91,
104, 117, 297–298
Manila, 36, 126, 135, 157, 182; Mendicants in,
102, 103, 104, 105, 155, 217, 259; Jesuits in, 103,
145
Marini, Filippo de, 156
Martini, Martino, 113, 133, 141, 321, 405, 419; as
procurator, 114, 118–119, 138, 148, 217, 232,
234, 240, 241; Novus Atlas Sinensis, 119, 121,
153, 366; De Bello Tartarico, 119, 153, 366;
Brevis Relatio de Numero et Qualitate
Christianorum apud Sinas, 153; Sinicae
Historiae, 153; and church in Hangzhou, 366–
367, 389, 401
Martins, Francisco, 40–41, 49, 251–252
Martins, Simão, 159, 236
Martyriologium Romanum, 228, 240
Mascarenhas, Pedro de, 42
Master of novices, 217, 220–221
Mastrilli, Mascello, 227
Matos, Bento de, 271
Matos, Gabriel de, 256
Mencius. See Four Books
Mendes, Domingos, 252
Mendes, Manuel, 197; in Shanghai, 171–172,
223; in Macau, 200; education of, 230–231; in
Jiangxi Province, 317, 384
Mendes, Pascoal, 87, 269
Mendicants. See Dominicans; Franciscans
Mexico, 103, 106, 170, 408–409
Mezzabarba, Carlo Ambroglio, 197
Ming China: relations with Portugal, 28, 29–30,
35, 40, 63–64, 84; policies toward foreigners,
29, 34, 43, 45, 49, 63–64, 66–71, 73, 74, 75,
76, 77–78, 79, 82–83, 86, 123, 180; religion in,
43–44, 296, 368; population of, 62; collapse
of, 85, 92–94, 98, 101, 107–113, 124, 153, 321,
326–327, 337, 374–375, 416; Southern Ming,
111–112; policies toward hui (associations),
332, 374. See also Chongzhen emperor; Wanli
emperor; Manchus; Tianqi emperor
Ministry of Rites (Lipu), 45, 49, 66, 67, 68, 125,
128–129, 159
Misericórdias, 81, 378
Mission administration: recruitment of mission-
aries, 9, 13, 20, 40, 52, 54–55, 73, 78, 89, 113,
118, 118–119, 122, 124, 126, 132, 144–145, 151,
151–152, 158, 161, 162, 163, 169, 177–178, 179,
180, 183, 193–194, 207–210, 216, 222, 225–228,
230–233, 255–256, 268–269, 275, 280, 281;
number of Jesuit priests, 49, 69, 77, 79–80,
89, 100, 113, 118, 118–119, 123, 124, 135, 138, 141,
151, 163, 169, 174, 190, 194, 268–269, 270, 275,
279, 280, 281, 328–329, 336, 339, 361–362;
finances, 60, 62, 64–65, 73, 100–102, 113–114,
140–141, 148, 163, 178–179, 324; number of
temporal coadjutors, 77, 89, 113, 118, 123, 138,
163, 174, 177, 270, 328. See also Vice-Province
of China
Moderns vs. Elders, 147–150, 154, 158, 160–161
Moluccas, 2, 410
489
Index F


Mongolia, 99
Montanha, José, 18
Monteiro, João, 108, 255, 272
Monteiro, José, 19, 151, 181, 203, 262, 416; as
Vice-Provincial, 107–108, 178, 188–189, 190,
282; Fuzhou confraternity founded by, 171;
education of, 211–212; Chinese language man-
ual by, 282–285
Monti di Pietà, 81, 392
Montoya, Antonio Ruiz de, 413
Morales, Juan Baptista de, 105, 119
Moral standards: of Christianity, 34, 97, 137,
276, 293, 294, 299, 300–301, 308, 315, 324,
340, 348, 349, 357, 358, 360, 388, 391, 392, 398,
410, 411; of Buddhism, 299, 313; of Confu-
cianism, 299, 370–371, 377–378, 392–393, 410
Morocco, 407
Motel, Claude, 119
Motel, Jacques, 119, 123, 145, 147, 148, 149
Motel, Nicolas, 119
Nanjing, 28, 89, 94, 111, 188–189, 190, 246, 302,
405; residence in, 28, 46, 54, 55, 69, 90, 174–
175, 177, 178, 292; early Jesuits in, 43–45, 46,
49, 68; confraternities in, 53, 364, 372–374;
1616 affair, 58, 66–71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 79,
86, 129, 153, 199, 251, 255–256, 258, 268, 322,
373–374; bishopric of, 150, 156, 162, 182, 183,
186
Nationality, 9–10, 86, 158–161, 181–183, 185–186,
231
Natural philosophy, 52, 213, 215. See also Science
Navarrete, Domingo de, 129, 130, 133, 137, 148;
Tratados Historicos, Politicos, Ethicos, y
Religiosos de la Monarchia de China, 155
New France: Jesuits in, 408, 409, 412; Hurons,
408, 410, 417; Algonquin, 409; Montagnais,
409; Iroquois, 410, 412, 414, 418; self-
mortification in, 415
Nianfo hui (Society for Reciting the Name of
the Buddha), 371
Nickel, Goswin, 124
Nóbrega, Manuel da, 407, 413
Noël, François, 141, 171, 192, 228
Nogueira, Francisco, 181–182, 235–236, 284–285,
286
Nominas. See Devotional objects
Non-Action movement, 69
Northern Netherlands, 152, 214
North Zhili, 170, 172–173, 200, 258, 280, 307,
321
Novitiate experiences, 20, 210, 212, 217–225, 232,
235, 289, 368
Obedience, vows of, 9, 12, 40, 79, 143–144, 145,
147, 149, 156, 157, 181, 188, 193, 197, 220
Oboi regents, 127–128, 134
Oliva, Giovanni Paolo, 148–149
Opposition to Jesuits: in Ming China, 32, 35, 37,
45–46, 50, 60–61, 63–64, 66–70, 82, 84–85; in
Qing China, 125–130, 153–154, 157, 164, 165–
166, 179–180, 187–189, 192, 199–202, 251; in
Japan, 54–55, 65–66, 69, 86, 101, 102, 182, 228,
413
Oratories. See Churches
Orthodoxy, Catholic, 6, 10–11, 14, 147, 154, 165
Orville, Albert d’, 117, 119
Pacheco, Feliciano, 128, 328; in Jiangnan region,
114; as Vice-Provincial, 134, 349; as Visitor,
149; on confraternities, 338, 396
Padroado, 154, 156, 162, 183, 185–186, 188, 189
Pallu, François, 157–158
Palmeiro, André, 84–85, 86–89, 124, 270, 316,
317–318, 326, 333, 374; and Terms Contro-
versy, 86–89
Pangu, 310–312
Pantoja, Diego de, 253, 261; and Ricci, 49, 50,
61, 63, 252; in Peking, 50, 61, 63, 68–69, 75,
252; and Terms Controversy, 86; on Shangdi,
87; on Chinese associations, 370–371
Papacy: legations to Peking , 4, 12, 165, 186–189,
191–192, 193, 197, 200, 231, 286; papal pri-
macy, 6, 10, 11–12, 105, 155, 165, 185, 186–187,
197; suppression of Jesuits by, 17, 18, 202; Cu-
ria, 104, 105, 106, 145, 192; Innocent X, 112;
policies on Chinese Rites, 119, 122, 133, 165,
185, 188–189, 192, 193, 197, 200; Alexander
VII, 119–120, 162, 185; Chinese designations
of pope, 140, 341; Paul V, 145; Innocent XI,
152, 185; relations with Spain, 154–155; policies
on evangelization in China, 157, 160, 162,
184–186, 187–188, 202–203, 286, 301, 358, 390;
Clement XI, 185–186, 188–189, 192, 193, 197,
200; Paraguay, 408, 411, 413, 414–415, 418
Parish priests, 174, 224, 225, 329, 330
Pasio, Francesco, 33, 247
Paternoster, 34, 140, 224, 294, 340, 348, 391, 395,
398
Paul V, 145
Peacemaking, 224, 237, 239, 398–399
Pedro II, 148, 162, 186
Peking, 89, 91, 143, 200, 268, 275–276, 326–327,
403–404; papal legation to, 4, 12, 165, 186–
189, 191–192, 286; Ricci in, 13, 49–53, 54, 57,
58, 59, 60, 86, 250, 291, 369–370, 371; resi-
dences in, 28, 69, 75, 79, 84, 116, 124, 129, 134,
490
E Index


137, 161, 174–175, 195, 202, 324, 327, 373, 385,
387, 417; Pantoja in, 50, 61, 63, 68–69, 75,
252; number of Chinese Christians in, 52,
177, 202; and Nanjing affair, 58, 68–69; Ursis
in, 61, 63, 68–69, 75; Longobardo in, 64, 78,
94; devotional confraternities in, 70, 370, 371,
372–374, 379, 381–384, 385–388, 401; Manchu
capture of, 71, 110–111; Schall in, 94, 103–104,
110, 111, 112, 113, 125, 126–129, 134, 281, 327;
Magalhães in, 116, 123, 127, 128, 129, 148, 327,
403; Buglio in, 116, 127, 128, 129, 148, 150,
275, 277, 327, 403; Verbiest in, 128, 129, 132,
134, 136, 137, 148, 159–160, 216–217, 277, 281,
355, 403, 419; Eastern Church (Dongtang/
Church of Saint Joseph) in, 134, 202, 327, 385;
Thomas in, 158, 160, 161; bishopric of, 162,
183, 189, 194–195, 198; Pereira in, 166–167,
178, 182, 188; Pimentel on, 403–406. See also
Emperors; Imperial Astronomical Bureau
Pereira, Tomé, 137, 151, 170, 203; on Chinese
clergy, 149–150; relations with French Jesuits,
160, 161, 166–167, 181, 182, 184; in Peking,
166–167, 178, 182, 188; on Edicts of Tolera-
tion, 180; education of, 211–212; teaching ex-
perience of, 222
Peru, 410, 416
Pescadores Islands, 94, 306
Petris, Francesco de, 37, 301,
302
Philip II, 5, 102, 417
Philip III, 55
Philip IV, 104, 106
Piao. See Kangxi emperor
Piety, lay, 9, 20, 81, 82–83, 138–142, 222, 296; in
Europe vs. China, 329–330, 333, 340, 343, 353,
364, 367, 368, 369, 371–373, 373, 381, 382–383,
384–388, 390–391, 401. See also Confrater-
nities; Devotional objects; Prayers
Pimentel, Francisco, 403–406
Pinto, Francisco, 169, 170, 173, 197, 280
Pires, Luís, 236
Polygamy, 147, 300–301
Portugal, 4, 6, 9, 17, 73, 145, 157, 162, 197, 211,
217, 224, 241, 317, 403, 407–408; Estado da
Índia, 2, 28, 29–30, 33, 63, 101, 113, 155–156,
178–179, 189, 197, 236, 321, 403; João III, 2,
42; relations with Ming China, 28, 29–30, 35,
40, 63–64, 84; trade with Japan, 101, 321, 325,
417; relations with Spain, 102–103, 154–155;
relations with France, 154, 155–156, 158–159,
162; relations with Qing China, 403. See also
Goa; João III; João IV; João V; Lisbon;
Macau; Padroado; Pedro II
Portuguese Assistancy, 17, 18, 55, 102, 158, 161–
162, 208, 222, 231, 233
Portuguese language, 17–18, 259, 263
Poverty, vows of, 40, 83, 138, 149
Prayers, 82, 96, 97, 142, 172, 224, 288, 294, 308,
309, 315, 316, 336, 349, 361, 370, 392, 397, 413;
prayer routines, 9, 81, 115, 118, 139–140, 202,
236, 330, 333, 335, 339–341, 343, 348, 363, 367,
369, 372, 374, 379, 383, 386, 388, 393, 394, 395,
396, 398, 414; prayer manuals, 81, 247, 305,
323, 340–341, 345, 347, 348, 392; singing of,
82, 173, 394; prayer groups, 171, 173, 334; on
sea voyages, 235, 236, 238; Salve Regina, 391.
See also Ave Maria; Credo; Paternoster; Lit-
anies
Preaching, 78, 90, 134, 138, 223, 226, 235, 237,
268, 277, 307, 350; sermons, 7, 172, 173, 214,
219, 223, 225, 232, 240, 326, 328, 331, 336, 361,
362, 370, 375, 381, 386
Prima Primaria. See Congregation of the An-
nunciation
Processions, 1–2, 117, 118, 168–169, 224–225, 238,
325, 413
Procurators, 55, 193, 321; Pasio, 33; Trigault, 65,
73, 78, 79, 103, 145, 216, 232, 234, 240, 255–
256, 269, 298; Semedo, 101–102, 232–233;
Martini, 114, 118–119, 133, 148, 217, 232, 234,
240, 241;and missionary recruitment, 118–119,
138, 226, 232–233, 234, 240, 256–257;
Intorcetta, 130, 138, 148–149, 150, 162; Cou-
plet, 140, 151–152, 158, 162, 232, 234; Grimaldi,
162; Arxó, 192
Propaganda Fide. See Holy Congregation for the
Propagation of the Faith
Provana, Antonio, 170, 191–192
Province of Flandro-Belgica, 213–214, 227
Province of India, 30, 37, 55. See also Goa
Province of Japan, 28, 29, 30, 156, 162, 201, 219,
232, 253–254, 403, 410, 414, 417; and China
mission, 18, 58, 64–66, 73, 85–86, 124, 138,
149, 181, 182, 200, 216, 228, 251, 256; mission
expansion, 34, 37, 40, 53, 54, 62, 144, 415;
Tokugawa era persecutions, 54–55, 65–66, 69,
74, 86, 101, 102, 182, 228, 413; Japanese clergy,
142–143
Province of Malabar, 236
Province of Portugal, 211, 222–223, 227, 230,
231–232, 236
Publications by Jesuits, 15–16, 76, 80, 89, 94,
135, 140, 152–154, 166, 182, 267, 276–277, 285–
286, 288, 298–299, 332–333, 360, 387, 397,
404–405, 410; De Christiana Expeditione apud
Sinas, 13, 153, 225–226, 291; Jiaoyun lun, 42,
491
Index F


Publications by Jesuits (continued)
50; Tianzhu shengjiao yueyan, 47, 294–295;
Ershiwu yan, 52; Jiren shipian, 52; Tianzhu
shiyi, 51–52; Tianwen lüe, 75, 276; Qiqi
tushuo, 80; Zhifang waiji, 80; Tianzhu
shengjiao nianjing zongdu, 80–81, 323, 340,
392; Dizui zhenggui, 81; Lingyan lishao, 81;
Shengren xingshi, 81; Misa jiyi, 81, 323;
Tianzhu shengjiao qimeng, 82, 308, 347, 377,
412; Song nianzhu guicheng, 83, 305, 343, 377;
Novus Atlas Sinensis, 119, 121, 153, 366; De
Bello Tartarico, 119, 153, 366; Typus Eclipsis
Solis anno Christi 1669, 131; Sapientia Sinica,
134, 279; Sinarum Scientia Politico-Moralis,
134, 279; Confucius Sinarum Philosophus, 152,
277; Brevis Relatio de Numero et Qualitate
Christianorum apud Sinas, 153; China
Illustrata, 153; Dell’Historia della Compagnia
de Giesu, 153; Imperio de la China, 153; Sinicae
Historiae, 153; Astronomia Europea, 154;
Compendiosa Narratione dello Stato della
Missione Cinesi dall’anno 1581 fin all’anno
1669, 154; Histoire de la Chine sous la Domina-
tion des Tartares, 154; Historica Narratio de In-
itio et Progressu Missionis Societatis Jesu apud
Chinenses, 154; Incrementa Sinicae Ecclesiae
Tartaris Oppugnatae, 154; Nouvelle Relation de
la Chine, 154; Relaçam do Estado Politico e
Espiritual do Imperio da China, 154; Nouveaux
Mémoiries sur l’État Présent de la Chine, 182–
183; Arte Breve da Lingoa Iapoa, 253–254, 261,
282, 408; Xiru ermu zi, 261; Xizi qiji, 261;
Qingshi jinshu, 276; Tang jingjiao beisong
zhengquan, 276; Tianzhu shengjiao shijie
zhiquan, 276, 412; Tabula Chronologica
Monarchiae Sinicae, 277; Tianzhu jiangsheng
chuxiang jingjie, 305, 401; Tongku jingji, 323;
Tianshen huike, 347; Tianzhu jiaoyao xulun,
355; Commentarii Collegii Conimbricensis, 412;
De Arte Rhetorica, 412; De Institutione
Grammatica, 412; Doutrina Christã, 412.
Pure Land school, 297
Qianzi wen (Thousand Character Classic), 249,
263
Qing China, 12, 14, 62, 93; relations with Jesu-
its, 4, 93, 111, 112–113, 116–117, 123, 125–138,
143, 156–157, 159, 160, 161, 164–169, 179–180,
184, 187, 188, 189–191, 192–193, 198, 199–202,
285, 337, 374, 399, 401; relations with Portu-
gal, 403; Qianlong emperor, 197. See also
Kangxi emperor; Shunzhi emperor;
Yongzheng emperor
Qingming festival, 118
Qu Shisi, Tomé, 99–100
Qu Taisu, 43
Ratio Studiorum: of Society of Jesus, 212–214,
223; of Vice-Province of China, 256–268, 269,
270, 272, 275, 278, 280, 281
Record of Rites. See Five Classics
Regional and national Catholic practices, 5, 6, 8,
9–10, 105, 133–134, 185
Reincarnation, 313
Residences, 32, 53, 54, 65, 89, 122–124, 174–175,
176–177, 199, 270, 295–296, 324, 354; man-
agement of, 220–221, 261; and evangelization
strategy, 291–293
Rho, Giacomo, 73, 100,
383
Ribeiro, Pedro, 55, 257; in Shanghai, 89, 324,
375; in Nanjing, 252; teaching experience of,
271, 272; in Hangzhou, 275; on mission cir-
cuits, 335
Ribera, Juan Bautista, 29
Ricci, Matteo, 3, 19, 33, 124, 142; De Christiana
Expeditione apud Sinas, 13, 153, 225–226, 291;
teaching experience of, 33, 221; reputation
and legacy, 15, 16, 20, 50, 57, 63, 153, 190, 275,
290–292, 326, 407; relationship with
Ruggieri, 32, 33; in Zhaoqing, 33–35, 41, 228,
247, 249, 291–292, 331; strategy for proselytiz-
ing Chinese, 34, 44, 46–48, 59, 60, 75, 77,
85–86, 195, 290–292, 332–333; in Shaozhou,
37, 40, 41, 45–46, 247, 251–252; ; Jiaoyun lun,
42, 50; literati clothing adopted by, 43–45,
297; relationship with Scielou, 43–45; in
Nanjing, 43–45, 46, 49, 68; in Nanchang, 45–
46; as mission superior, 46, 55, 61, 65; and
Valignano, 46, 49, 55–56, 65, 209; in Peking,
49–53, 54, 57, 58, 59, 60, 86, 250, 291, 369–
370, 371; as Western Scholar, 49, 50, 55, 184,
257; Ershiwu yan, 52; Jiren shipian, 52;
Tianzhu shiyi, 52; on Buddhist and Daoist
clergy, 60–61; death of, 61–62, 63, 168; on
Confucian philosophy, 106, 255; Le Comte
on, 182–183; in Coimbra, 230; Chinese lan-
guage studied by, 244, 247, 249–250, 263, 283,
408; writings in Chinese, 291, 294; Xizi qiji,
261; and confraternities, 369–370, 371, 372–
373
Rocha, João da, 40, 51, 70–71, 74, 251; Tianzhu
shengjiao qimeng, 82, 308, 347, 377, 412; Song
nianzhu guicheng, 305, 343, 377
Rodrigues, Jerónimo, 77, 268
Rodrigues, João, 61, 243–244, 291; and Terms
492
E Index


Controversy, 85–86, 87, 88; Arte Breve da
Lingoa Iapoa, 253–254, 261, 282, 408
Rodrigues, Manuel, 169
Rodrigues, Simão, 141, 150, 170–171, 173, 211–
212,
Rodrigues, Simão, early Jesuit, 42, 407
Rome, 55, 65, 102, 126, 133, 140, 152, 190, 191–
192, 307, 403; curia of Society of Jesus in, 31,
36–37, 83, 87, 99, 112, 119, 143, 148–149, 150,
159, 162, 183, 184, 211, 227, 230, 231, 232, 256,
415; Jesuit college in, 115, 232, 371
Rougement, François de, 119, 230; during Can-
ton confinement, 128, 130; at Changshu, 136,
221, 349–350, 353, 356–357, 384; Relaçam do
Estado Politico e Espiritual do Imperio da
China, 154; journey to China, 241
Ruggieri, Michele, 30–37, 40, 41, 42, 203, 228,
292; and Valignano, 30–31, 33, 34–35, 36–37,
55, 245–246, 247; study of Chinese language
by, 30–31, 55, 244, 245–247, 249, 263, 283,
408; and Ricci, 32, 33, 228, 244, 297
Rural missions, 75, 93–98, 164, 172, 223–225,
301, 317, 361, 409
Sá, Rodrigo Anes de, 197
Sá, João de, 200
Sacraments, 70, 81, 135, 151, 172, 201, 223, 276,
344; baptism, 5, 34–35, 47, 48, 52, 53, 54, 59,
71, 75, 76, 89, 94, 98, 132, 135, 138, 142, 171,
173, 176, 194, 202, 277, 282, 288, 291, 293,
295, 300–301, 302, 308, 315–316, 317–318, 334,
335, 353, 354, 357, 358–360, 362, 363, 384, 399,
401, 405; confession, 48, 70, 81, 83, 98, 116,
141, 144, 172, 173, 201, 213, 219, 223, 224, 225,
235, 237, 238, 239, 268, 277, 282, 284, 331, 334,
335, 344, 353, 361, 363, 370, 372, 375, 385, 391,
395, 397, 398, 399, 404–405, 409; frequency
of reception, 54, 83, 94, 95, 132, 139, 142, 171,
215, 225, 330, 331, 333, 335, 338, 353, 362, 363,
367, 369, 372–373, 375, 378, 379, 381, 383, 385,
388, 391–392, 395, 398, 414; Eucharist, 70, 83,
98, 116, 124, 134, 141, 145, 147, 168, 172, 173,
201, 224, 331, 334, 335, 341, 363, 364, 367, 372,
381, 385, 386, 389, 391–392, 398, 399.
Sacrobosco, Joannes de, 52, 213
Saints, 79, 81, 115, 133, 139, 168, 207, 238, 317,
319, 323, 341, 390, 396
Saldanha, Manuel de, 403
Sambiasi, Francesco, 78, 94, 111, 112, 216, 322;
Lingyan lishao (On the Soul), 81
Sánchez, Alonso, 36, 37, 103, 417
Sande, Duarte de: as mission superior, 36, 40,
41, 43, 44, 54; at College of Macau, 37, 251
Sandoval, Alonso de, 409
Schall, Johann Adam, 15–16, 20, 73, 328; in
Shaanxi Province, 83; in Peking, 94, 100, 103–
104, 110, 111, 112, 113, 125, 126–129, 134, 281,
327; and Calendar Case, 125, 126–129;
Historica Narratio de Initio et Progressu
Missionis Societatis Jesu apud Chinenses, 154
Scholastics, 40, 142, 212–213, 217, 226–227, 236,
237
Schreck, Johann Terrenz, 73, 80, 89, 216,
269
Scielou/Xeiji, 43–45
Science: role in evangelization, 15–16, 34, 46, 52,
75–76, 160, 287, 411; astronomy, 16, 49, 51,
68, 75, 110, 127, 128, 129, 132, 154, 213, 215–
217, 276, 411; mathematics/geometry, 16, 34,
46, 51, 52, 63, 78, 158, 160, 194, 215–217, 255;
Jesuit education in, 52, 162, 213, 215–217, 225,
240, 260; Jesuit teaching of, 174–175, 222. See
also Imperial Astronomical Bureau
Sea voyages, 233–242; Carreira da Índia, 20,
210–211, 235, 240; Cape route, 119, 209, 231,
234, 236, 241, 416; loss of missionaries during,
209, 234, 241–242
Semedo, Álvaro, 68, 70, 89, 118, 257, 328, 405; in
Shaanxi Province, 83; as procurator, 101–102,
232–233; on mission finances, 113–114; Imperio
de la China, 153; education of, 217–218, 219–
220; Chinese language taught by, 269,
271
Sexual abstinence, 115, 314
Shaanxi Province, 19–20, 108, 110, 160, 163, 183,
306, 321, 334, 380; Muslim traders in, 63;
Hanzhong, 115, 159; residences in, 124; num-
ber of Christians in, 124, 177. See also Xi’an
Shandong Province, 71, 116, 169, 170, 194–195,
350; Jinan, 99, 118, 155, 159, 177, 194, 280;
Franciscans in, 132, 155, 162, 177, 194;
Linqing, 170; Tai’an, 348, 381, 389
Shangchuan Island: Xavier’s death on, 1–2, 28–
29, 321
Shangdi, 85–89, 265, 286, 301. See also Terms
Controversy
Shanghai, 70, 89, 90, 114, 135, 140, 178, 321, 326,
351, 419; residence in, 59–60, 78, 79, 151, 223,
269, 271, 272, 295–296, 417; number of
Christians in, 94, 124, 136, 171–172, 176–177,
329, 335–338, 347, 361, 363; confraternities in,
100, 114–115, 135, 335–338, 341, 347, 350, 354–
355, 356, 360, 363, 375, 382–383, 384, 396;
Brancati in, 110, 114–115, 136, 270, 335–338,
347, 363, 380–381, 382–383; Zhuanshu village
near, 324
493
Index F


Shanxi Province, 4, 20, 71, 108–109, 169, 183;
Vagnone in, 94, 95, 97, 99, 124, 334–335;
Jiangzhou, 78, 81, 82, 89, 94, 117, 124, 170,
177, 271, 319, 334, 371; Costa in, 99; Puzhou,
99, 110, 124; Soares in, 142, 217, 350; Taiyuan,
170
Shaozhou, 45–47, 54, 292–293, 295, 301; Ricci
in, 37, 40, 45–46, 249, 251–252; Cattaneo in,
40; Longobardo in, 47, 50, 63–64, 252, 301
Shen Fuzong, Miguel, 152
Shen Que, 66–69, 71, 73, 75, 77, 80, 322
Shunzhi emperor, 112, 116, 126, 128, 327
Siam, 119, 124, 156, 157, 159, 300
Sichuan Province, 110, 123, 169, 176, 275;
Chengdu, 99
Sign of the cross, 96–97, 139, 172, 309, 340, 341
Silva, Feliciano da, 60, 252, 300
Simões, Francisco, 169, 170, 172–173, 258, 259,
321
Soares, José, 197, 203; in Shanxi Province, 142,
217, 350; in Peking, 179, 369; on Chinese
clergy, 201; on Chinese language study, 286;
on catechists, 357; on confraternities, 171, 364,
369, 385–388
Société des Missions Étrangère de Paris, 19, 156,
181
Sodalities. See Confraternities
Soeiro, João, 40, 45, 51, 251, 287–288, 331–332;
Tianzhu shenjiao yueyan, 47, 294–295
Songjiang, 122, 140, 142, 170, 176–177, 178, 200,
202, 350, 362
Sorbonne (University of Paris), 11, 185
Sousa, João de, 217
Southern Netherlands, 9, 60, 152, 221, 222, 230
Spain, 2, 6, 10, 31, 36, 101, 140, 148, 152, 370,
407–408; relations with Portugal, 102–103,
154–155; relations with France, 106, 154; rela-
tions with papacy, 106, 154–155. See also Philip
II; Philip III; Philip IV
Spanish Assistancy, 103
Spiritual Exercises, 219, 292, 370
Spring and Autumn Annals. See Five Classics
Standaert, Nicolas, 62, 332, 368
Suárez, Cipriano: De Arte Rhetorica, 412
Sun Wukong, 3
Sun Yuanhua, Inácio, 78, 90, 269, 270
Sunu clan, 195, 199
Superiors General, 18, 55, 65, 130, 148, 161, 182,
209, 219, 226, 227, 230, 387; and Visitors, 30,
34, 83–84, 87, 133, 183; Aquaviva, 34, 75–76,
86, 231–232, 246; Vitelleschi, 84, 87, 102, 256;
Nickel, 124; Oliva, 148–149; González, 162,
183–184; Loyola, 319; Borja, 383
Suzhou, 128, 170, 201, 365
Syria, 407
Tang dynasty, 80
Technology, 15, 16, 34, 52, 80, 216
Teles, Baltasar, 212, 218, 219
Terms Controversy, 85–89, 133, 137, 265, 267–
268, 286, 301, 416
Tertianship, 219, 235
Thirty Years’ War, 10, 105
Thomas, St., 352
Thomas, Antoine, 202; in Peking, 158, 160, 161,
166; as Vice-Provincial, 174–179 364; teaching
experience of, 222; education of, 281
Tian , 85–89, 137, 187, 195, 265, 286. See also
Terms Controversy
Tianqi emperor, 77–78, 82, 374
Tianxue, 46, 47, 50, 58, 60, 67, 69, 75, 76, 78,
90, 98
Tianzhu , 85–89, 195, 293, 309, 310, 312, 315, 319,
326, 341, 358, 390, 395, 397, 401. See also
Terms Controversy
Tibet, 99, 411–412, 416
Tokugawa Hidetada, 65
Tong, Agueda, 405
Tong Guoqi, 327, 405
Tongshan hui (Society for Sharing Goodness),
370, 378
Tonkin, 124, 156, 355–356, 406
Tournon, Carlo Tomasso Maillard de, 165, 186–
189, 191–192, 193, 197, 200, 231, 286
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, 40, 54, 99, 102
Trigault, Michel, 89, 117, 208–209, 221, 271
Trigault, Nicolas, 60, 257, 371, 405; as procura-
tor, 65, 73, 78, 79, 103, 145, 216, 232, 234, 240,
255–256, 269, 298; in Kaifeng, 78; death of,
87, 88, 89, 416; De Christiana Expeditione
apud Sinas, 153, 225–226, 291; teaching experi-
ence of, 221; Xiru ermu zi, 261
Tudeschini, Agostino, 239–240, 241, 271
Turcotti, Carlo, 178–179
Ursis, Sabatino de: in Peking, 61, 63, 68–69, 75;
and Terms Controversy, 86; education of,
230; study of Chinese language by, 250, 252
Vagnone, Alfonso, 55, 68, 78, 80, 81, 99, 271; on
Manchus, 71; Shengren xingshi, 81; and Terms
Controversy, 86, 87; in Shanxi Province, 94,
95, 97, 99, 124, 334–335; on Mendicants, 102;
on Chinese language studies, 252, 257
Valat, Jean, 118, 150, 159, 280, 281, 347–348, 381,
389
494
E Index


Valente, Diogo Correa, 1
Valignano, Alessandro, 31, 74, 203, 234; and
Ruggieri, 30–31, 33, 34–35, 36–37, 55, 245–246,
247; and Ricci, 46, 49, 55–56, 65, 209, 251;
and Dias the elder, 53–54
Van Hamme, Pieter, 170, 173, 197
Veiga, Francisco da, 357
Venard, Marc, 372
Verbiest, Ferdinand, 3, 15–16, 20, 119, 147, 203;
in Peking, 128, 129, 132, 134, 136, 137, 148,
159–160, 216–217, 277, 281, 355, 403, 419;
Typus Eclipsis Solis anno Christi 1669, 131; rela-
tionship with Kangxi emperor, 132, 136; as
Vice-Provincial, 150, 157, 158; Astronomia
Europea, 154; death of, 158, 166; education of,
214, 216–217; on catechists in Peking, 355;
Tianzhu jiaoyao xulun, 355
Veronicas. See Devotional Objects
Vicars Apostolic, 19, 160, 180, 181, 183, 184; rela-
tions with Jesuits, 156–158, 162, 177, 181, 185–
186, 282, 356; and Chinese Rites, 157, 181, 184,
185–186, 187, 190; exile from China, 190; in
Tonkin, 355–356
Vice-Province of China: founding of, 18, 58, 73–
77, 203, 251, 255–256, 307, 316, 333; mission
expansion, 21, 78–80, 89–91, 93–100, 114–115,
122–124, 133–134, 135–136, 138–139, 141, 151,
165, 169–174, 177–178, 192, 210, 216, 245,
270–271, 275, 280, 285, 302–303, 328–329,
335–338, 350, 361–362, 399; and Portuguese
Assistancy, 102–103, 231; and Portugal, 181–
182, 403. See also Mission administration
Vice-Provincials: office of, 74, 183, 257, 258, 260,
264, 374; Dias the younger, 78, 89, 103, 276;
Figueiredo, 83; Furtado, 98–102, 103–104,
107, 109, 272, 273; Monteiro, 178, 188–189,
190, 282; Pacheco, 134, 349; Intorcetta, 150,
151, 159; Verbiest, 150, 157, 158; Thomas, 174–
179, 364; Sá, 200; Costa, 277, 279
Vieira, António, 413
Vieira, Francisco, 65, 69, 74, 75, 86, 102–103,
236–240
Vietnam, 12, 157
Virgin Mary, 34, 53, 117, 139, 140, 236, 238, 307,
314, 323, 340, 341, 352, 370, 385, 390, 394, 397
Visdelou, Claude de, 160, 184
Visitors, 87, 101, 149, 174, 175, 183, 415; Dias the
elder, 53–54, 99, 272; Vieira, 65, 69, 74, 75,
86, 102–103, 236–237; Jerónimo Rodrigues,
77, 268; Gama, 133, 135; Sebastião de
Almeida, 149; Pacheco, 149; Filippucci, 150,
151, 159, 160, 161–162, 217; Martins, 159, 236;
Turcotti, 178–179; Nogueira, 181, 182, 285–
286; Álvares, 222, 224, 236, 237, 239; Matos,
256; Dias the younger, 276; Furtado, 338, 348;
Lubelli, 356. See also Palmeiro, André;
Valignano, Alessandro
Vitelleschi, Muzio, 84, 87, 256
Walta, Michael, 110, 221
Wan Qiyuan, Paulo Banhes, 150–151, 280
Wang, Empress Dowager Helena, 112
Wang Pan, 36
Wang Zheng, Felipe, 58–59, 78, 80, 378, 393
Wangfu, 45
Wanli emperor, 36, 53, 54, 61, 66, 67, 90, 111,
266, 300; and Ricci, 41–42, 49, 61
White Lotus movement, 67, 69, 71, 332, 333
Wills, John, 91
Works of Mercy, Corporal and Spiritual, 81, 137,
294, 324, 377, 378, 392, 393, 394
Wu Cheng’en, 3
Wu Yushan, Simão Xavier de Cunha, 150–151
Xavier, Francis, 25, 28–30, 42, 144, 161, 227, 407;
death and tomb of, 1–2, 28–29, 140; as mis-
sionary model 207–208, 227, 237, 245–246,
321, 358, 407; relics of, 319, 321
Xi’an, 78, 98, 115, 177; Nestorian Christian stele
at, 80, 276, 419; Jesuits in, 83, 89, 109, 150,
159, 271, 322, 337, 379–380; confraternity of
women in, 379–380; penitential confraternity
in, 396
Xu, Candida, 140, 152, 324, 341, 350, 375
Xu, Lucio, 173
Xu clan, 178, 324
Xu Guangqi, Paulo, 52, 58–59, 64, 67, 68, 69,
77, 78, 80, 290, 295–296, 298, 419; and calen-
dar reform, 84; death of, 90, 166; donations
to mission church by, 100
Xu Zuanzeng, Basílio, 123, 140
Xuanzang, 3
Yang Guangxian, 127–128, 129, 130, 132, 134
Yang Tingyun, Miguel, 58–59, 67, 69, 80, 290,
300, 374, 375; and Hangzhou, 60, 77, 90,
300, 392–393; Xiaolun bu bingming shuo, 69;
and Terms Controversy, 87; death of, 90; do-
nations by, 100; confraternity founded by,
392–393
Yangzi River, 4, 19, 99, 109, 123, 169, 405
Ye Xianggao, 78, 90
Yellow River valley, 19, 109, 124, 177
Yongzheng emperor, 195, 198–201, 401; and pro-
scription of Christianity, 165, 199–202, 399
Yunnan Province, 98, 176
495
Index F


Zhang Jizong, 137
Zhang Juzheng: Sishu jizhu zhijie,
266
Zhang Xianzhong, 110
Zhaoqing, Jesuits in, 32–36, 37, 41, 228, 247,
249, 251, 291–292, 331
Zhejiang Province, 36, 41, 79, 89, 128, 166, 168,
177, 181, 183, 199, 276; Ningbo, 159, 303, 305–
317, 318; hui (associations) in, 378
Zhending, 170
Zhu Xi, 265, 266, 273
Zürcher, Erik, 199, 300, 393, 396
496
E Index