“The directives of Matteo Ricci” Regarding the

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What Were “The Directives of Matteo Ricci”
Regarding the Chinese Rites?
1
by Paul A. Rule, Ph.D.
Paul A. Rule is an Honorary Associate at the History
Program, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia,
and a Distinguished Fellow
of the EDS-Stewart Chair
for Chinese-Western Cultural History at the USF Ricci
Institute. Rule has produced over one hundred and fifty
publications covering the history of the early Jesuit missionaries in China and Sino-Western cultural relations
of the 16th-18th centuries. He has taught courses on
modern China, Catholicism, religion and society, peace
studies and Aboriginal religion.
3 3 3 3 3
This Pacific Rim Report is offered by the USF
Ricci Institute as part of its contributions to the
worldwide celebrations marking 2010 as the 400th
anniversary of the death of the great Jesuit pioneer of
the China Mission, Matteo Ricci, who died in Beijing
on May 11, 1610.
The paper was originally presented by Rule at an
international symposium at Taiwan’s Fu Jen University
in April 2010. The content is based on Rule’s work for
the Institute’s Chinese Rites Controversy Project. (See
Pacific Rim Report No. 32, February 2004, for more
information on this important topic).
The Decree of 19 April 1707 from the Kangxi Emperor (excerpt)
regarding Ricci’s so-called ‘Directives’. The marked section reads:
“Instruction to all Westerners: Henceforth whoever does not
follow the customs of Li Madou [Matteo Ricci] shall positively not
be permitted to live in China, but must be expelled.” [Per A.S.
Rosso’s translation.] See Endnote 2.
ed ‘resolutions’ by Valignano; and a summary
theology’. He taught his Chinese visitors, he
of these directives produced by Valignano “the
tells us, that “the law of God was in conformity
same year” (presumably 1603). Gabiani sums
with the natural light [of reason] and with
these up as follows:
what their first sages taught in their books.”6
All these early directives for this Church
deal directly with inducing Christian morals
and virtues in the Chinese neophytes, eradicating depraved and superstitious abuses;
with tolerating prudently social rituals
and civil cults according to the practice of
the nation,4 and especially with rites for
dead parents; grateful veneration of Master
Confucius within the limits of common
Matteo Ricci, S.J., 1552-1610
Detail of a Ziccawei Orphanage portrait, early 20th c.,
in the collection of the USF Ricci Institute.
I
n December 1706 the Kangxi Emperor,
annoyed by the activities of the papal legate, Charles Maillard de Tournon, made
Matteo Ricci” (利瑪竇的規矩.)2 Surprisingly, the specific directives Ricci issued as
Superior of the Jesuit China Mission have not
come down to us. However, they can be reconstructed with considerable accuracy from
Ricci’s own writings and the attacks of his critics as well as the writings of those many Jesuits
who claimed his authority for their practices.
And we have a good summary of the original,
then in the archives of the Japan Province in
Macao, written in 1680 by the Vice-Provincial
of China at the time, Giandomenico Gabiani.
Gabiani, in his “Apologetic Dissertation on
the Rites Permitted in the Chinese Church,”
produced a list of extant documents on the
subject going back to the time of Ricci.3 They
comprise Ricci’s directives or instructions
(ordinationes) issued in 1600 after consultation with his colleagues of the China Mission;
further directives issued by Ricci in 1603 and
confirmed by the Visitor Alessandro Valignano
after consulting the whole Mission; some add-
2
3
May 2010
Desiderius Erasmus, seeing civility, as the
Chinese saw li 禮, as covering all forms of behavior, from what we would call religious ritual
to social intercourse and political correctness.7
What he was rejecting was that rituals for dead parents and Confucius were
idolatry (idolatria), or were in the Christian
“Ricci was a Christian humanist
in the line of Desiderius Erasmus,
seeing civility, as the Chinese
saw li 禮, as covering all forms of
behavior.”
as a condition for missionaries remaining in
China the observance of “The Directives of
He was a Christian humanist in the line of
courtesy;5 with the licit use of Chinese
sacred names as well as European; with
covering the head as a sign of reverence
with the Chinese; and finally with purifying
the intention in fasting according to the
Chinese custom…. Father Ricci before he
made any decisions spent almost 18 years
closely studying the customs, rituals and
books, and consulted in various provinces
and places all sorts of scholars and mandarins of all ranks especially the highest.
Gabiani and later Jesuit apologists, like
their anti-Jesuit counterparts, seem to have
assumed that Ricci was denying the ‘religious’
nature of rituals for ancestors and Confucius,
but Gabiani was writing seventy years after
Ricci’s death and as part of a rebuttal of the
views of the Dominican friar, Domingo
Navarrete. By then, the new distinction of
sense ‘worship’ (latria) of the deceased.8 He
admitted, as we shall see, that there might be
elements of superstition in such rituals as conducted by non-Christians, but these were not
essential and could be eliminated. Ricci believed that Chinese Catholics could be trusted
to have correct intentions in performing such
rituals—intentions of veneration, reverence
and emulation, not worship, as of exemplary
human beings, not gods—and intentions
were what determined the morality of an act.
Furthermore, the non-Christian educated elite
were regarded by Ricci as holding materialistic
and even atheistic views which made them
less, not more, suspect of idolatry and superstition. As many later Jesuit polemicists were to
point out, one of the strangest arguments of
their opponents was that the Chinese were
simultaneously atheists and idolaters, both
materialists and believers in ghosts and spirits.
Either they were using these terms very loosely
or simply as empty pejoratives.9
Many later subjects of contention are hinted
‘religious’ from ‘secular’ (with the former
at in Gabiani’s summary. There is, for example,
being condemned if not Christian) had
the question of ‘fasters’. Should converts who
come to dominate the controversy over the
came, as many did, from the ranks of sectarian
Chinese Rites. Ricci himself, as we shall see,
Buddhism, be allowed to continue to practice
was coming from a different tradition, the late
vegetarian fasts? Ricci appears to have believed
Christian humanism of the Renaissance with
that, if fully instructed, they might be allowed to
its emphasis on ‘natural religion’ and ‘natural
do so, now with Christian motives.10
Also mentioned are liturgical practices
gieri is even more explicit: “He was nailed to
12
was the mandarins, not Buddhists, who were
which followed Chinese rather than European
the cross.” Ricci wrote of the crucifixion and
most respected and that these “follow the
sensibilities, such as covering rather than
soon afterward illustrated lives of Christ in-
schools and doctrine of one of their ancient
uncovering the head during mass. I would
cluding the crucifixion were published by the
philosophers who dealt with moral virtues and
note in passing that the fierce supporters of
China Jesuits.13 Ricci certainly recommended
good government,” that is, of Confucius.18 He
uncovering the head, who included some
caution in public display of the crucifix after
reported to the Bishop of Evora in 1588 on the
Jesuits, do not seem to have reflected on the
his experience with the eunuch Ma Tang
initial success of his scheme for China:
14
fact that women—and bishops for part of the
who interpreted it as a fetish, but it was an
time—covered their heads during the liturgy
integral part of the presentation of Christian
in Europe. They had converted culturally and
doctrine by Ricci and his companions.15 The
historically contingent European customs into
Tianzhu Shiyi 天主實義, from which it is
Christian absolutes.
I
t is a pity that the other general directives
issued by Ricci and Valignano perished
in the eighteenth-century dissolution
of the Society of Jesus. What we can say with
certainty is that they did not include, as was
maintained by their enemies, any instructions
not to preach Christ crucified. The Tianzhu
“The Chinese Rites Controversy
was from the beginning as much
about ‘terms’, the Chinese names
for God and other essentials of the
Christian faith, as it was about
rituals.”
shilu 天主實錄 of Ricci’s companion, Michele
Ruggieri, specifically mentioned the cruci-
absent, is not a doctrina for the instruction of
fixion and death of Tianzhu become man,
neophytes but a work of apologetics to attract
although the casual Chinese reader would
those outside the faith.16 The description of
perhaps not have appreciated the full signifi-
‘catechism’ given to it relates to its question
cance of the phrase “suffering on a support in
and answer form, not its intended audience.
the form of the character ten.”11 [Note: The
External conformity to Chinese customs
Chinese numeral ten is written 十.] In one of
in dress and behavior had been prescribed
his Chinese poems, which may, however, have
from the beginning. The Visitor, Valignano,
been seen only by his Christian friends, Rug-
instructed the members of the Japanese
mission not only to live and act like Japanese
but to celebrate in their houses Japanese
festivals, including Bon (the Japanese ‘All
Souls’ commemoration of the dead), and to
conform to Japanese ceremonial usage.17 He
also argued that in a hierarchical society like
that of Japan (and presumably this applied
in China also), both European and Japanese
Jesuits should attempt to obtain acceptance
as the social and religious equivalent of the
influential religious sects. In Japan, these were
clearly Buddhist. But soon Valignano learned,
The Crucifixion of Jesus, from Giulio Aleni’s
pictorial life of Christ, 1635
no doubt from Matteo Ricci, that in China it
When I was in Japan, I determined that two
of the fathers [Ruggieri and Ricci] who were
in Amacao, the Portuguese port of China,
should devote themselves to nothing else
but learning the language and literature of
China, and be given masters and everything
else necessary. And it happened that they
made great progress in the language, so when
I returned from Japan I appointed them to
this great enterprise of entering China. I gave
them instructions that seemed suitable for
this. They should introduce themselves into
China as men of letters who had come from
far-off lands because of the reputation China
had for learning and letters. To achieve this
they should first of all write a treatise in the
form of a dialogue in the language and letters
of China in which they would expound the
whole substance of our holy faith.19
But this immediately raised the question
of God-language, which Gabiani refers to in
his summary of Ricci’s directives as “the licit
use of Chinese names as well as European.”
The Chinese Rites Controversy was from the
beginning as much about ‘terms’, the Chinese
names for God and other essentials of the
Christian faith, as it was about rituals.
Initially, the problem arose in relation to
the formula for baptism. Probably following
the practice of the Japanese mission, Ricci and
his companions seem to have first used a formula in Chinese which represented the sounds
of the Latin baptismal formula:20
Ego te baptizo in nomine Patris et Filii et
Spiritus Sancti. Amen
阨峨德拔弟作引諾米搦罷德利斯厄德
費離意厄德斯彼利都斯三隔弟。亞孟
Ewo de badizuo yin nuominuo Badelisi ede
Feiliyi ede Sibilidusi Sangedi. Yameng
[Note: This modern Chinese transliteration does not
perfectly reflect the pronunciation of Ricci’s time.]
University of San Francisco Ricci Institute
3
3
The reason for this curious approach was
(a term equally ambiguous in its European
ens was “theology rather than astrology since
a concern about the validity of the baptism,
usage) as ‘governor of heaven and earth’. The
they worship a god they call Tian.”27
which in Europe was thought to depend
zhu avoided any ambiguous misidentification
on the exact use of the prescribed formula.
with ‘sky’ and ‘the heavens’ while retaining the
his view that Tian and Shangdi were God-
Undoubtedly���������������������������������
,��������������������������������
Latin was used in baptisms per-
biblical notion of Heaven as the dwelling-place
concepts from studying Confucian writings,
formed by European priests, but once Chinese
of God. There were some obscure uses of the
especially the Four Books and the Classics. In
Jesuit brothers, catechists, and perhaps lay
term in Buddhism and popular religion which
his most famous work, one which the Kangxi
Christians, following the standard catechism,
later critics would raise, but I very much doubt
Emperor read and praised on several occa-
began bapti������������������������������
z�����������������������������
ing, even if only in emergen-
that Ricci and Ruggieri were aware of this, or
sions, the Tianzhu Shiyi (first edition 1603,
cies, problems immediately arose. As a
even that they would have been deterred by it.
the year of Ricci’s major “Directives”), Ricci
catechetical device it was useless: the formula
Tianzhu seemed perfect as the Chinese name
concluded: “You can see from examining the
21
was nonsense or worse. And even the concern
about phonetic exactness lost force through
the variety of dialects and local pronunciations. By about the time of Ricci’s death, the
China Mission was already moving towards a
translation solution not fully realized however
until the twentieth century.22
M
ore central, and a subject of dis-
Matteo Ricci seems to have arrived at
passages of the ancient books that Shangdi and
“This solution [to the problem of
the Chinese name for God] was
enthusiastically adopted not only
by the Jesuits in Japan but also
by the Spanish Dominicans in
Manila.”
pute for centuries to come, was
Tianzhu differ in name only.”28 And what of
Tian? And, especially, what of the Neo-Confucian interpretation of Tian as Principle (li 理)
rather than a personal god? Ricci’s reply to a
purported inquirer in the Tianzhu Shiyi is that
the material sky could not be the controller of
all things; its use in the ancient books is metaphorical. Heaven must, in the end, be the Lord
for the Christian God and so Tianzhujiao 天
of Heaven.29 Even less is the Neo-Confucian
The Jesuit solution was the ancient one, re-
主教, the name by which Catholic Christian-
Supreme Ultimate (Taiji 太極) a god to be
flected in the very word ‘God’ (from Germanic
ity is known in China to this day, was born.
worshipped:
Gott) and the Latin and Greek Deus and Theos.
This solution was enthusiastically adopted in
This was to take a corresponding term in the
place of awkward phonetic renderings based
local language drawing on local belief systems.
on the Spanish dios/Portuguese deus not only
But which term?
by the Jesuits in Japan but also by the Spanish
A solution was found accidentally, but to
Ricci and his companion, Michele Ruggieri, it
seemed providential. Ruggieri had been forced
to leave temporarily his first mission in Zhaoqing 肇慶 in early 1583, and when he returned
with Ricci in September that year they found
their disciple, Chen, had preserved their mass
altar in his house and placed on it incense
burners and above it on the wall an inscription
to ‘the Lord of Heaven’, Tianzhu 天主.23 Rug����
gieri was working on his first Chinese work to
be published the next year as “A True Record
of the Lord of Heaven,”24 and in the Latin
sketch of 1581 had described the Chinese
Tian, which he translated as coelum in Latin
Dominicans in Manila.25
the term for ‘God’ in Chinese.
4
3
May 2010
But the adoption of Tianzhu as the name
for the Christian God left open the possibility
of the use in certain contexts of the common
God-language of the Confucian tradition,
Tian 天 and Shangdi 上帝. Ruggieri seems to
have initially thought, as indicated in a letter
of 1581, that Tian was simply the material sky
and that the Chinese knew no God.26 This
was a conclusion that could easily be reached
by a beginner in Chinese language studies on
encountering the bewildering variety of tian
expressions for weather, time, stars, and so on.
By the end of his life, however, Ruggieri was
writing that all the Chinese study of the heav-
Although I have only recently entered
China I have thoroughly and diligently
studied the ancient classics. I have heard
that the gentlemen of ancient times paid
their respects to the High Lord of heaven
and earth (Tiandi zhi Shangdi 天地之上
帝), but I have never heard that they reverenced a Supreme Ultimate. If the Supreme
Ultimate was the begetter of the High Lord
of all things, why didn’t the ancient sages
say so?30
The view that Taiji and Li were Song
Dynasty innovations was one that Chinese
scholarship came to accept not long after.
Ricci used Shangdi and Tian extensively
and interchangeably in his Chinese writings
but seems to have preferred Shangdi, especially
in his more literary works such as his “Treatise
on Friendship” (Jiaoyoulun 交友論, 1595)
and his “Eight Songs for the Harpsichord”
(Xiqin quyi bazhang 西琴曲意八章, 1601).31
rites to Confucius that he describes in such
36
literary academies, of the period, which were
loving detail? It is certainly not impossible,
committed to political and moral reform as
given his detailed descriptions of them, that he
well as recovery of the mission of Confucian-
“offered the Spring and Autumn sacrifices,” or,
ism. The Jesuits found allies there in their
at least, attended them. His account is complex
struggle against Buddhism and their advocacy
and nuanced, and it is his translator/editor
of high and pure morals in private and public
Nicholas Trigault who added a flat: “[Con-
life, although some academicians regarded the
fucius] was never venerated with religious
growth of Christianity as a symptom of the na-
37
rites, however, as they venerate a god.” Ricci
himself unequivocally calls it a ‘sacrifice’,
involving incense and the offering of animals,
tion’s moral decline rather than a remedy.42
On ancestor rituals he was more cautious.
He saw no problem in Christians performing
them, because he thought their Christian in-
An early Qing Christian ancestral tablet
In the second chapter of his Tianzhu Shiyi,
on mistaken views about the Lord of Heaven,
Ricci first equates Tianzhu with Shangdi:
“He who is called the Lord of Heaven in my
“Ricci, significantly, does not say,
as later Jesuits did, that rituals
for Confucius were not religious,
but rather that they were not
idolatrous.”
humble country is he who is called Shangdi
(Sovereign on High) in Chinese.”32 He then
identifies Shangdi with Tian, denies that Tian
as Lord (zhu) is the ‘blue sky’, and asserts that
“only the one true Lord of Heaven who creates
all things and who produces and preserves
mankind may be reverenced.”33
H
ow far did Ricci’s assimilation to
Confucianism go in ritual matters? In his 1599 preface to Ricci’s
“Treatise on Friendship,” Qu Rugui 瞿汝夔,
Ricci’s first important scholar disciple, wrote:
He recites the texts of the Sages, and
observes the laws of the kingdom. He wears
a scholar’s cap and belt, and he offers the
spring and autumn sacrifices. He is pure in
his behavior and walks in the paths of virtue. He respects and serves the commands
of Heaven and promotes orthodoxy.34
Did Ricci really participate in the solemn
sacrifices of the Confucian ‘school’35 in Spring
and Autumn? Through what ritual actions, if
any, did he promote orthodoxy?
With no patriarchal household and no
ancestral graves to tend, presumably he would
have avoided ancestor rites. But what of the
struction would obviate any danger of ‘superstition’, i.e., beliefs incompatible with Christian
faith, about the location of the spirits or their
power to help their descendants. He was duly
cautious about such beliefs on the part of the
majority of Chinese. However, he was quite
certain that idolatry was not involved. This
“but not a true sacrifice,” since “they acknowl-
assessment is found in the Storia, where he
edge no divinity in him and ask nothing of
summed up his view of ancestor rites after a
him.”38 Also, with serious later consequences,
detailed and accurate description of the more
Trigault’s Latin version turns Ricci’s designa-
solemn rituals:
tion of Confucius’s disciples from the Italian
santi (his rendering of Chinese sheng 聖) to
the Latin divi, or gods (Chinese shen 神).39
Ricci, significantly, does not say, as later
Jesuits did, that rituals for Confucius were
not religious, but rather that they were not
idolatrous.40 This stems from his general view
that Confucianism was in origin a monotheistic natural religion but that this ‘original
Confucianism’ in time was overlaid with Buddhist and Daoist superstition and denatured
by a naturalistic materialist interpretation
in the Song Dynasty.41 Some Confucians,
he thought, had never lost the sense of the
ancient tradition which was preserved in the
texts and structure of the ritual, and some
were recovering it during the intellectual
and political crisis of the late Ming. This was
especially the case with the shuyuan 書院, or
The reason they give for this observance on
behalf of their ancestors is this, “to serve
the dead as if they were living.” Nor do they
think that the dead come to eat these things,
or have need of them; but they say they do
it because they know of no other way of
showing the love and gratitude they have
for them. Some say that this ceremony was
instituted more for the living than the dead,
that is to teach the children and ignorant
to know and serve their parents while alive,
seeing that important people, once they are
dead, perform for them the services they
were accustomed to perform when they
were alive. And since they neither recognize
any divinity in these dead, nor ask anything
of them, nor hope for anything from them,
the practice is completely free from any
idolatry, and perhaps could even be said
to involve no superstition. Nevertheless,
it would be better to replace this custom
with giving alms to the poor for the souls of
these dead, when they become Christians.43
There is not the slightest suggestion that
Ricci acknowledged but condoned idolatry,
University of San Francisco Ricci Institute
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5
as many later anti-Rites critics and even some
the living; for example, obeisance to parents
death. But the letters, which survive as well as
modern writers have alleged. After investiga-
and the courtesies at solemn banquets. In his
those of others, all confirm this general picture
tion he was convinced that no idolatry was
description of the latter, Ricci notes the ritual
of Ricci’s views on Confucianism and Chinese
involved, no ‘worship’ of the ancestors, and
of making a libation of wine before sitting
rituals. “The D���������������������������������
����������������������������������
irectives of Matteo Ricci” on an-
certainly not superstition on the part of Chris-
down, which he says is offered to ‘the Lord of
cestor rituals and rituals in honor of Confucius
44
48
tians. ‘Perhaps’ (forse) it was not superstitious
Heaven’. In other words, he sees a religious
sprang from a deep-seated Christian human-
in any way.
element to Chinese social occasions which he
ism which he found echoed in the Confucian
interestingly compares to the Greco-Roman
tradition.
The diversity of beliefs associated with
ancestor rituals, ranging from an austere
convivium, the love-feast of those who are
49
agnosticism on the part of many scholars to
accustomed to eat and drink together. Ricci,
fear of the wrath of unappeased ancestors by
in typical Christian humanist fashion, sees the
many ordinary Chinese, meant that the ritual
actions per se could not be accused of implying acquiescence in any specific set of beliefs,
superstitious or otherwise, and it was in the accompanying beliefs, not acts, that superstition
lay. In the end, he envisages what has become
the modern practice in many Chinese Catholic
communities, the development of modified
domestic and communal rituals combining
Chinese forms with specifically Catholic
“The diversity of beliefs associated
with ancestor rituals, ranging from
an austere agnosticism to fear of
the wrath of unappeased ancestors,
meant that the ritual actions per
se could not be accused of implying
acquiescence in any specific set of
beliefs, superstitious or otherwise.”
practices.
A similar caution marks his position on
funerary rituals. Ricci, in the Storia, does not
play down the overtly religious elements,
including the normal participation of “many
priests of the idols,” i.e., Buddhist monks, or
the burning of paper money and goods.45
social, especially the ritualized social occasion,
as grounded in religion. He does not describe
such actions as ‘political’ (politicus in Latin)—
polite or civil in the modern sense—as opposed to religious.
Interestingly, though, the term politicus is
[The ancient Chinese] always took great
care to follow in all they did the dictates of
reason which they said they had received
from Heaven, and they never believed of the
King of heaven and other spirits, his ministers, things as indecent as our Romans, the
Greeks, the Egyptians and other foreign
nations believed. Whence we can hope of
the immense goodness of the Lord, that
many of these ancients were saved in the
natural law, with the special help that only
God grants to those who do on their part
as much as they can to receive it…. This
can also be derived from many beautiful
books that remain to this day, of these their
ancient philosophers, full of great piety and
good advice for human living and acquiring virtues, in no way inferior to the most
famous of our ancient philosophers.51
It was but a short step from this to approving the rituals that enshrined their values, the
values which Kangxi was defending by insisting on “The Directives of Matteo Ricci” being
followed by missionaries in China.
What is obligatory, however, and laid down
used by Trigault in the description of Ricci’s
Endnotes
in the ritual books always consulted on such
own funeral in Trigault’s Latin appendix to his
occasions, are the mourning clothes, the visits,
own 1615 Latin version of Ricci’s journals:
1. This paper draws heavily on a chapter on Ricci
in my forthcoming history of the Chinese Rites
Controversy.
the bowing, and the offerings of food and
46
drink “just as when they were alive.” It would
seem that Ricci had no problem with the basic
death rituals stripped of Buddhist and Daoist
elements.
On the annual visits to the graves he is
quite laconic: “Every year on the Day of the
Dead, the relatives go to the cemetery to per-
When the ecclesiastical rites were concluded, the neophytes did not omit their
own political rites (suos politicos); they
performed bows and genuflections first to
the image of Christ the Savior, then to the
tomb as was their custom.50
The same action, one clearly worship,
the other clearly not so interpreted; but both
‘religious’.
form the usual ceremonies, burning incense
Ricci’s comments as detailed in this paper
and making offerings according to the usage
are taken from his memoirs, written in the last
of the land.”47 These rituals resemble those to
year of his life and found in his desk after his
6
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May 2010
2. The formal decree on the subject (of 19 April
1707) is to be found in Chen Yuan 陳垣, ed.,
Kangxi yu Luoma shijie guanxi wenshu yingyinben 康熙與羅馬使節關係文書影印本,
Beijing: Gugong Bowuyuan 故宮博物院, 1932
(reprint Taibei: Xuesheng shuju; Zhongguo
shixue congshu 23, 1973), doc. 4, pp. 13–14.
Guiju 規矩 in this document is translated as
‘customs’ in A. S. Rosso’s translation in Apostolic
Delegations to China of the Eighteenth Century
(South Pasadena; P.& I. Perkins, 1948, doc. 5, p.
242), but the phrase seems to be regulatory and
to imply obligation rather than mere custom.
They were Ricci’s instructions as superior of the
China Mission and confirmed by the Visitor,
Alessandro Valignano, and Gabiani rightly
called them ordinationes, i.e., directives, regulations, or standing orders.
3. Gabiani’s 1680 list (elenchus), which is to be
found in several manuscripts of his Dissertatio
Apologetica, which was published as Dissertatio
Apologetica … de Sinensium Ritibus Politicis,
Liege: Streel, 1700. It is reprinted in full as an
appendix to Henri Bernard-Maître, “Un dossier
bibliographique de la fin du XVIIe Siècle sur la
Question des Termes Chinois,” in Recherches de
Science Religieuse 36 (1949), pp. 25–79. The first
four items dealing with the time of Valignano
and Ricci are conveniently reproduced in a long
note in P. M. D’Elia, ed., Fonti Ricciane [henceforth FR], Roma: Libreria dello Stato, 1949, vol.
2, pp. 273–74.
4. Gabiani writes: “de politicis ritibus et civili cultu
ex more gentis prudenter tolerandis.” It is worth
noting here that this is the language of later
controversy. Ricci himself did not call the rites
in question either ‘political’ or ‘civil’.
5. “Intra civiles terminos contenta.” Again, the
language is not that used by Ricci himself in his
extant writings; ‘civil’ should not be read here as
‘secular’ as opposed to ‘religious’.
6. FR, N250, vol. 1, p. 195. This is one of the passages that was deformed by Ricci’s Latin translator, Nicholas Trigault, or Trigault’s German
editors, by a long theological addition about
‘the innate light of nature’ and adding to the
natural law the supernatural as taught by God
become man. Gallagher, in his translation of
Trigault, further distorts it by reading the ‘inner
light’ as ‘conscience’, not ‘reason’ (China in the
Sixteenth Century, p. 156). Ricci’s understanding
of the term is elaborated in FR, N709, vol. 2, pp.
292–93: “especially using arguments that can
in some way be proved by natural reason and
understood by the same natural light.”
7. See Roger Chartier, The Cultural Uses of Print,
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1987, ch. 3, especially p. 95, for the evolution of
the notion of the civil, specifically in the French
term civilité from its Erasmian sense, which embraced all forms of behavior from the religious
and the spiritual, “qualities of the soul or the
divine in man,” to strictly social activities.
8. There is no evidence that Ricci toward the
end of his life came to regard ancestor rituals
as ‘worship’ in this sense as Timothy Billings
seems to claim in the introduction to his new
translation of Ricci’s Jiaoyulun (On Friendship):
One Hundred Maxims for a Chinese Prince, New
York: Columbia University Press, 2009, p. 12).
9. See Lucien Febvre on the loose use of ‘atheist’ in
the sixteenth-century controversy (The Problem
of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century, Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982, p. 132).
10. For Ricci’s extensive treatment of this question in the Tianzhu Shiyi, see True Meaning of
the Lord of Heaven (T’ien-chu Shih-i), ed. E.
Malatesta, S.J., trans. with introduction and
notes by D. Lancashire and Peter Hu Kuo-chen,
S.J., St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1985,
#294–320, pp. 262–83.
11. 在於十字架, see Ming-Qing Tianzhujiao
wenxian 明清天主教文獻: Chinese Christian
Texts from the Roman Archives of the Society
of Jesus, Nicholas Standaert & Adrian Dudink,
eds., Taipei: Taipei Ricci Institute, 2002 [henceforth MQTW], 1: p. 63.
12. 將身釘十字, see Albert Chan, “Michele Ruggieri, S.J. (1543–1607) and his Chinese Poems,”
in Monumenta Serica 41 (1993), p. 146.
13. See P. M. D’Elia, S.J., “La passione di Gesù
Cristo in un'opera cinese dal 1608–1610,” in
Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu [henceforth
ARSI] 22 (1953), pp. 276–307. In the 1605 catechism Tianzhu jiaoyao 天主教要, which may
have been written by Ricci and was certainly
approved by him and sent to Rome with his
annotation, the crucifixion is plainly acknowledged, at least in the edition I have seen in the
ARSI, Jap. Sin. I.57a. (see MQTW, 1: p. 361).
14. FR, N588, 2: pp. 115–16.
15. See P. M. D’Elia, S.J., “Il domma cattolica integralmente presentato da Matteo Ricci ai letterati della
Cina,” in Civiltà Cattolica (1935.II), pp. 35–53.
16. In the Tianzhu Shiyi, he introduces the incarnation and redemption in general terms and
merely states that the Lord of Heaven “experienced everything [experienced by man]” (True
Meaning, #580, p. 449).
17. Il ceremoniale per i missionarii del Giappone: Importante documenti circa i metodi di adattamento
nella Missione giapponese del secolo XVI, edizione
critica, introduzione e note de Giuseppe Fr.
Schütte, S.J., Rome: Storia e Letteratura, 1946.
18. Historia de principio y progresso de la Compañia
de Jésus en las Indias Orientales (1542–1564), ed.
J. Wicki, Rome, 1944, p. 253.
19. Letter from Goa, 23 Dec. 1588, to Don Theotonio de Bragança, Archbishop of Evora, in Cartas
que os Padres e irmaos da Companhia de Jesus
escreverão dos Reynos de Japão e China, Evora,
1598, vol. 2, ff. 170rv.
20. This is the formula given in the 1605 edition
of the Tianzhu jiaoyao, published in Beijing
presumably under the auspices and probably
authorship of Ricci. Compare the note in FR,
vol. 1, p. 370, on the edition held by Propaganda
Fide with Ricci’s own annotations. In 1611,
Ricci’s successor Longobardo introduced a
slightly different and improved formula which
does not simply follow the Latin (it has a Chinese formula for baptizing and omits the Latin
grammatical endings), but still uses European
names for the Trinity (see the edition in ARSI:
Jap. Sin. I. 57a, published in MQTW, vol. 1: p.
341. See Etienne Roulleaux Dugage, “La version
chinoise de la formule baptismale,” in Axes 13
(1981): 25 on the historical development of the
baptismal formula.
21. See Albert Chan, Chinese Books and Documents
in the Jesuit Archives in Rome: A Descriptive
Catalogue, Japonica-Sinica I-IV, Armonk, N.Y./
London: M.E. Sharpe, 2002, pp. 458–59, on
the concern for observing the correct forms in
baptism by members of lay confraternities.
22. Only in 1924 did the Synod of Shanghai allow
baptism in the name of the (Chinese) Father
(fu 父), Son (zi 子), and Holy Spirit (shengshen
聖神); see Roulleaux Dugage, “La version
chinoise…,” p. 28.
23. FR, N236, 1: p. 186.
24. Published in 1584 as the Tianzhu Shilu 天主實錄.
25. For example, in Juan Cobo’s Tianzhu zhengjiao
shilu zhenchuan 天主正教實錄真傳 (1593).
See the facsimile in C. Sanz, Primitivas Relacioñes de España con Asia y Oceanía (Madrid,
1958), and the edition and translation by
Santamaria, Dominguez, and Villaroel, Pien
Cheng-chiao chen-ch’uan shih-lu: Apologia de la
Verdadera religion: Testimony of the True Religion
(Manila, 1986).
26. Letter to Jesuit General Everard Mercurian,
Macau, 12 Nov. 1581, in Opere Storiche del P.
Matteo Ricci S.J., ed. P. Tacchi Venturi, S.J., vol.
2, Macerata, 1913, pp. 401–2.
27. “Commentarii,” in ARSI, Jap. Sin. 101.II, f. 300r.
28. My translation from the Chinese text in True Meaning, #108, p. 124.
29. True Meaning, #114, p. 131.
30. My translation from True Meaning, #78, p.106.
31. P. M. D’Elia gives a word count of Ricci’s respective employment of Tianzhu, Tian, and Shangdi
in his various writings in “Prima introduzione
della filosofia scolastica. in Cina (1584, 1603),”
in Zhongyang Yanjiuyuan: lishi yuyan yanjiusuo
jikan 中央研究院：歷史語言研究所集刊
[Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology], Academia Sinica 28, 1956, pp. 166–67.
32. True Meaning, #103, p. 121 (romanization
changed).
University of San Francisco Ricci Institute
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33. True Meaning, #110, 11, p. 127 (romanization changed).
34. See Tianxue chuhan 天學初函, ed. Li Zhizao 李之藻
[1629], Taibei: Taiwan xuesheng shuju, 1965, vol. 1, pp.
295–96.
35. “Scuola,” in FR, vol. 1, p. 40.
36. For example, FR, NN55, pp. 178–79. See P. Rule, K’ungtzu or Confucius?, Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1986, pp.
46–48 for a more full analysis.
37. Trigault’s De christiana expeditione apud sinas suscepta
a Soc. Jesu ex P.M. Ricci commentariis libri V (Augsburg,
1615), trans. L. J. Gallagher, as China in the Sixteenth
Century, New York: Random House, 1953, p. 30.
38. FR, N44, vol. 1, p. 40. Trigault added a gloss that the
Chinese “are accustomed to use the word sacrifice in a
broad and indefinable sense” (Gallagher, p. 335), which
suggests it had already become an issue a few years after
Ricci’s death.
39. De Expeditione, p. 108. Athanasius Kircher in his China Illustrata (1667) copied this passage. In the French edition
(1670), apart from the disciples being ‘dieux’, Confucius
himself becomes ‘le Dieu Confutius’. This then was used
in anti-Jesuit polemics as proof that Ricci believed Confucius was worshipped as a god in Confucian rituals.
40. Compare Lionel Jensen, Manufacturing Confucianism:
Chinese Traditions and Universal Civilization, Durham,
N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997, p. 64: Ricci “emphatically denied the religious aspect of the ceremonies in
honor of Confucius.” This is a common view, but one
that does not survive a close textual analysis. Similarly,
Filippo Mignini in his preface to the new edition of
Ricci’s memoirs says Ricci denies Confucianism is a
‘vera religione’, but the passage he quotes says simply it
is not ‘una legge formata’, i.e., a hierarchically organized
institutional religion, an entirely different matter; see
Della Entrata della Compagnia di Giesù e Christianità nella
Cina, ed. Piero Corradini, Macerata: Quodlibet, 2000,
p. XVII. In one of his earliest letters from China, Ricci
stated that there was no ‘religion’ in China, but in the
context he seems to mean no centrally organized body
with fixed and enforced doctrines, since he goes on to say
that their beliefs are so complex that nobody seems to be
able to give a clear explanation of them, and then writes
of the three ‘sects’ (sette) of China which he contrasts
with Islam, which he seems to regard as a legge formata
(Ricci to Roman, Zhaoqing, 13 September 1584, Ricci,
Lettere (1580–1609), ed. Francesco D’Arelli, Macerata:
Quodlibet, 2001, p. 84). Confucianism is again included
among the three religions (sette) of China in FR, bk. 1, ch.
10.
41. The key passage on the development of Confucianism
is found in FR, N170, vol. 1, pp. 108–10. See a more full
analysis of Ricci’s writings in Rule, K’ung-tzu or Confucius?, pp. 26–43.
42. See Albert Chan, “Late Ming Society and the Jesuit Missionaries,” in C. Ronan and B. Oh, eds., East Meets West:
the Jesuits in China, 1582–1773, Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1988, pp. 153–72; J. Gernet, China and the
Christian Impact: Conflict of Cultures, Cambridge, Mass.:
Cambridge University Press/Paris: Editions de la Maison
des Sciences de l'Homme, 1985, pp. 17–18, 132–33.
On Ricci’s participation in discussions in Shuyuan in
Nanzhang and Nanjing, see FR, NN536 & 556, vol. 2, pp.
46, 74.
43. FR, N177, vol. 1, pp. 117–18.
44. E.g., Hugh Baker, who alleges Ricci ‘condoned heresy’ by
allowing ‘worship’ of ancestors (More Ancestral Images,
Hong Kong, 1980, p. 154).
45. Again Gallagher adds a gratuitous and misleading note
by saying “the funeral procession itself is really a religious
function” (China in the Sixteenth Century, p. 73), a comment found in neither Trigault’s Latin nor the Italian
original.
46. FR, N133, vol. 1, p. 84.
47. FR, N133, vol. 1, p. 85.
48. FR, N129, vol. 1, p. 77.
49. FR, N128, vol. 1, p. 76.
50. FR, N998, vol. 2, p. 628.
51. FR, N170, vol. 1, pp. 109–10, compare an exact translation in De Expeditione, p. 104. This is spelled out even
more explicitly in a letter to Francesco Pasio: “We can
hope in the divine mercy that many of their ancients were
saved through observing the natural law with whatever
help God through his goodness gave them” (Letter of 15
February 1609, Lettere, p. 518).
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