La Politique de conversion de Matteo Ricci en Chine / Matteo Ricci's Conversion Policy in China.

Jacques Gernet

doi:10.3406/assr.1973.2069

Matteo Ricci the Daoist

10.1093/oso/9780198812531.003.0004 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Haun Saussy

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Ming Dynasty ◽

Christian Theology ◽

Secular World ◽

Matteo Ricci

When the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci arrived in China in the 1580s, he had to invent an identity for himself: he and his doctrine were unknowns. That would soon change as Ricci became a Ming-dynasty celebrity through his writings in Chinese and personal contacts. From an examination of contemporary writings about Ricci in Chinese, a constellation of references emerges that depict him, through repeated references to the Zhuangzi and associated texts, as a kind of Daoist sage, a hermit in the midst of the secular world, perhaps a wonder-worker or envoy from a transcendental realm. Ricci’s own role in creating this legend is unclear, but his admirers and interlocutors developed and extended the reference, as a means of giving early-modern Christian theology a purchase on the Chinese political and intellectual situation of the time.

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Natural Constraints to Cultural Relativism Example: Ricci’s Pacific-Centered World Maps

Asiatische Studien – Études Asiatiques ◽

10.1515/asia-2018-0023 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 73 (3) ◽

pp. 379-397

Author(s):

Elmar Holenstein

Keyword(s):

East Asia ◽

Canary Islands ◽

Cultural Relativism ◽

Central State ◽

The West ◽

Gestalt Principles ◽

Matteo Ricci ◽

The Pacific ◽

Made In

AbstractNot everything that is logically possible and technically feasible is also natural, for example, placing China in the exact center of a world map. Such a map would not correspond to the laws of perception.Matteo Ricci, who was the first to create Chinese world maps on which the Americas were depicted, had to choose between two ideals, between a world map that obeys the gestalt principles of perception and a world map with the “Central State” China in its center. The first ideal mattered more to him than the second, although he took the latter into account as well. The result was a Pacific-centered map.Since we live on a sphere, what we perceive to be in the East and in the West depends on our location. It is therefore natural that in East Asia, world maps show America in the East and not – as in Europe – in the West. This was the argument underlying Ricci’s creation of Pacific-centered maps, and not the intention of depicting China as close to the center of the map as possible.It is only in East Asia that Ricci was the first to create Pacific-centered maps. World maps with the Pacific in the midfield were made in Europe before Ricci, motivated by the traditional unidirectional numbering of the meridians (0°–360°) from West to East starting with the Atlantic Insulae Fortunatae (Canary Islands).

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EXCEPTION TO THE RULE: HOW ADAPTATION GENIUS MATTEO RICCI FAILED TO UNDERSTAND CHINESE PAINTING

Journal of the Institute of Oriental Studies RAS ◽

10.31696/2618-7302-2020-4-126-135 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 126-135

Author(s):

Dinara V. Dubrovskaya ◽

Keyword(s):

Host Country ◽

Qing Dynasty ◽

Second Generation ◽

Interesting Case ◽

Chinese Painting ◽

Great Opportunity ◽

Matteo Ricci ◽

Jesuit Mission ◽

Visual Materials ◽

Painting Techniques

The article looks into an interesting case of artistic accommodation, which for a number of reasons did not happen during the time of the leader and one of the founders of the Jesuit mission in China, Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), a successful preacher and author of the so called ‘Matteo Ricci Rules’, justifying the need to adapt missionary activities and preaching to the beliefs, traditions and culture of the host country. The author proposes for her analysis two opposite figures — the Chinese Jesuit of the second generation, provincial landscape painter Wu Li (1632–1718) and Italian painter who worked at the court of the emperors of the Manchu Qing dynasty Giuseppe Castiglione (Lan Shining; 1688–1766), trying to show the long way of the adaptation of artistic techniques from the time of the mission’s founder Matteo Ricci, who did not accept and did not understand Chinese painting, and Wu Li, who did not see the value of European painting, to Lan Shining and his patrons, the Qing emperors, who created a sophisticated ‘Occidentalist’ style, combining features of Western and Chinese painting. The author concludes that Matteo Ricci, even though he used visual materials in his sermons as an aid to verbal preaching, missed the great opportunity of preaching through the brush, while Giuseppe Castiglione and his colleagues, European masters working at court, essentially continued to use ‘Ricci’s Rules’ and the accommodative method of preaching through the adaptation of European painting techniques to the Chinese ones, using the appropriate direct wishes and orders of the crowned representatives of the non-Chinese dynasty.

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The Perils of Accommodation: Jesuit Missionary Strategies in the Early Modern World

Journal of Jesuit Studies ◽

10.1163/22141332-00403002 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 4 (3) ◽

pp. 395-414

Author(s):

Andrés I. Prieto

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Cultural Context ◽

Common Ground ◽

Modern World ◽

The Political ◽

Central Feature ◽

Matteo Ricci ◽

Jesuit Missionaries ◽

Jose De Acosta ◽

Christian Message

The notion of accommodation, or the adaptation of one’s message to one’s audience, has been regarded as a central feature of the Jesuit way of proceeding at least since the seventeenth century. In recent years, scholars have come to understand accommodation as a rhetorical principle, which—while rooted in the rules of classical oratory—permeated all the works and ministries performed by the Jesuits of the Old Society. By comparing the theoretical notions about accommodation and the advantages and risks of adapting both the Christian message to native cultures and vice versa, this paper shows how and under what conditions the Jesuit missionaries were able to translate this rhetorical principle into a proselytizing praxis. By focusing on the examples of José de Acosta in Peru, Matteo Ricci in China, and of those Jesuits working in the missions in Paraguay and Chile, this essay will show how the needs in the missionary field superseded and overruled the theoretical requirements set beforehand. They revealed the ways in which the political and cultural context in which the missionaries operated determined the negotiations needed in order to achieve a common ground with their would-be converts if their mission was going to happen at all.

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