For the record: The Canton exile of the missionaries (1666-1671) by the Polish Jesuit Szpot Dunin

The Chinese Rites Controversy definitively shaped the history of Christianity in China. When some missionaries were exiled in Canton from 1666 to 1671, they sought to resolve their disagreement on whether certain Confucian rituals could be practiced by Chinese Christian converts but their differences ended up even more entrenched. In his unpublished history of the China mission covering the period from 1640 to 1700, the Polish Jesuit Tomasz Ignacy Szpot Dunin (1644-1713) gives an account of the discussions held in Canton. His account not only reveals previously known materials but also offers new insights on the Controversy.

Rethinking the Rites Controversy: Kilian Stumpf's Acta Pekinensia and the Historical Dimensions of a Religious Quarrel

The Chinese rites controversy (c.1582–1742) is typically characterized as a religious quarrel between different Catholic orders over whether it was permissible for Chinese converts to observe traditional rites and use the terms tian and shangdi to refer to the Christian God. As such, it is often argued that the conflict was shaped predominantly by the divergent theological attitudes between the rites-supporting Jesuits and their anti-rites opponents towards “accommodation.” By examining the Jesuit missionary Kilian Stumpf's Acta Pekinensia—a detailed chronicle of the papal legate Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon's 1705–6 investigation into the controversy in Beijing—this article proposes that ostensibly religious disputes between Catholic orders consisted primarily of disagreements over ancient Chinese history. Stumpf's text shows that missionaries’ understandings of antiquity were constructed through their interpretations of ancient Chinese books and their interactions with the Kangxi Emperor. The article suggests that the historiographical characterization of the controversy as “religious” has its roots in the Vatican suppression of the rites, which served to erase the historical nature of the conflict exposed in the Acta Pekinensia.

The Jesuit Giambattista Tolomei (1653–1726): Cardinal and Philosopher

This article sets out what is known of the life of Giambattista Tolomei (1653–1726), sometime rector of the Jesuit school in Ragusa (Dubrovnik), of the Collegio Romano, and the Collegio Germanico, cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, philosopher, theologian, bibliophile, and philologist. Tolomei’s life intersected a series of significant events in the church’s history and that of the Society of Jesus: on-going conflict with Jansenism, the Chinese Rites controversy, significant innovations in the Society’s intellectual curriculum, and its renewed incorporation within the upper echelons of the Roman Curia. Tolomei played a key part in all those developments, and his role in what transpired is explored here—placed in context to establish his significance to the Society’s history in the early eighteenth century and beyond.

Chinese Atheism in the Mémoires de Trévoux: a Cultural Project against the Existence of a Perfect Atheism

In the first decades of the eighteenth century, the Society of Jesus was busy changing its interpretation of the Chinese world and denying the possible existence of a society of atheists. To safeguard the Chinese mission, the Jesuit Antonio Provana claimed that European cultural models could not be used in order to interpret China, and that the voices and purported beliefs of the Chinese should be reported on their own terms. The same refusal to interpret Chinese culture through the interpretative schemes that European cultures had inherited (largely from the ancient Greeks or Romans) also filled the pages of the Jesuit journal Mémoires de Trévoux between 1701 and 1719, the period analyzed in this contribution. My article in this special issue argues that, due to the extreme rhetorical caution necessary to the Jesuits in France during the third phase (1700) of the Chinese rites controversy, the Mémoires de Trévoux pursued a cultural policy intended to deny the existence of any atheism whether in a single individual or in a whole nation. This departure from a Eurocentric perspective, as well as the denial of atheism in any form, became themes that forcefully reappeared during the Enlightenment.

Christianity and Empire: The Catholic Mission in Late Imperial China

Reflecting on the theme of ‘Empire and Christianity’, this article compares two periods in the Catholic mission to China. The first period, between 1583 and 1800, was characterized by the accommodation of European missionaries to the laws, culture and customs of the Chinese empire during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The work of the Jesuits, in particular, demonstrated a method of evangelization in which Christian teachings could be accommodated to the political realities of Late Imperial China as exemplified by the work of Matteo Ricci, Ferdinand Verbiest, Tomas Pereira, Joachim Gerbillon and many generations of Jesuits and missionaries of other religious orders. The Chinese Rites Controversy, however, disrupted this accommodation between Christianity and empire in China. Despite tacit toleration in the capital, Christianity was outlawed after 1705. After the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773, Catholicism in China became increasingly indigenized. In 1842, after the defeat of the Qing empire by the British in the First Opium War, the prohibition of Christianity was lifted. Both Catholic and Protestant missionaries entered China, backed by Western diplomatic and military power. This led to the confrontation between China and Christianity, culminating in the 1900 Boxer Uprising. A concerted effort to indigenize Christianity in the early twentieth century ultimately failed, resulting in the separation of Christianity in China from global Christianity after 1950.

Gregorio López (1617–1691): The first Chinese Bishop

Gregorio López was a Chinese Christian who, after becoming a Dominican friar and priest, was appointed bishop and apostolic vicar of Nanjing. Previous biographies did not touch on the difficulties of admitting a Chinese Christian as a friar, and explanations of his late and problematic consecration remain insufficient. The documentary sources presented in this article contribute to a better understanding of these issues. Obstacles in his consecration are explained in the context of institutional and national conflicts. It is shown how Gregorio was proposed as bishop by French vicars seeking more effective control of the mission in China. A Dominican friar was supposed to become his theological adviser to settle the Chinese Rites Controversy. However, this plan failed. New documents reveal in detail how the Chinese bishop was engaged by Jesuits and Augustinians to support their position against the French vicars and to defend their opinions on Chinese rites.

When the Cross Met the Lotus

Chapter 1 considers the Catholic presence in Tonkin and its interaction with Vietnamese religions. It begins by describing the sociopolitical situation of Tonkin as a land of two kings. The chapter then narrates the development of Vietnamese Christianity from its beginning in the Jesuit, Augustinian, and Dominican missions to the eighteenth century. The chapter charts the varied reception of Christianity by the ruling class of Tonkin, and Christianity’s relationship with Confucianism. It ends with a narrative of the protracted Chinese Rites Controversy, describing the attempts to reconcile Catholic dogma with Vietnamese cultural and religious practices, especially regarding those pertaining to filial piety, and a description of the Controversy’s long-lasting effects in Vietnam.