Christianity in China

This is the English original of a published Chinese-language article:
Chong Hai lai xin: Yesuhui dangan zhong de wan Qing Zhongguo difangshi 崇海来信 - 耶稣会档案中的晚清中国地方史 (Letters from Chongming and Haimen: Chinese local history in the Jesuit archives).
In Shidi 史地 , no.1 (2017): 39-53.  Rendered into Chinese by MA Xi 马玺 （Xavier Ma).

The fame of letters written by Jesuit missionaries in China is due largely to the significance of those letters as sources of knowledge of China for Europeans in seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. This essay introduces unpublished letters from a later period of history, held in the Jesuit Archives in Vanves. The letters selected for this study were written by missionaries active in Chongming and Haimen counties, Jiangsu province, in the middle of the nineteenth century. Through transcription, translation, and interpretative commentary, the essay demonstrates the value of these materials as sources of local history, arguing that the very fact of their “strangeness” helped make the missionaries alert to aspects of daily life that might have been taken for granted by local people.

Fr. Matteo Ricci SJ (Li Madou, 利瑪竇 1552-1610) is probably one of the most famous Jesuit pioneers who arrived in China during late Ming dynasty. For this reason, scholars have been studying his writings and his efforts to establish a cross-cultural dialogue with Confucian literati. His zealous Christian life and his devoted study of the Chinese classics became an example for other missionaries. Yet, this image portrayed through the years lacks consideration of his deepest human sufferings that led him to embrace Chinese culture and Chinese philosophy. In Ricci’s letters one can appreciate not only his exemplary character but also his human weakness, his daily suffering, and his concerns about the mission in China.  Thus, his letters, that had been sent to several missionaries or relatives in Italy and elsewhere, narrate his periods of immense joy, his periods of profound suffering, and at the same time they elucidate several ideas that he developed during his journey. As a result, they are not solely relevant in order to study Ricci’s personal thought but also, in a philosophical sense, they mirror his existential path that is the base of the ideas he developed during his stay in China.
There is another dimension expressed in his letters: Ricci’s dreams. I attempt here to briefly describe not solely the existential portrait emerging from his writings but also the oneiric sphere, based on concrete dreams that he narrated to his fellow friends but also his hopes for the future. Therefore, I examine the philological problems that are part of the complex effort of rendering his letters into English and also the twofold dimension—the existential and the oneiric—emerging from his writings.  I will explore only a limited part of the extended corpus of Ricci’s letters and only few possible relevant topics. Yet, hopefully this would still be an example of their relevance in order to understand his personal adventure in China and his own creative mindset torn between a strong faith, a constant existential melancholy,  and the fear of time running out, that is an invitation to reflect on the brevity of life.

Music, as a cultural commodity, usually travels early on, and so it was that even as the first important sixteenth century mission was established in China (by Matteo Ricci and Michele Ruggieri, at Zhaoqing in 1583) Western musical instruments were present, and were the subject of admiration by the local literati. No instrument better reflected the highest level of Western technology than the pipe organ, the most complex mechanical device in Western culture from antiquity until the Industrial Revolution. In examining Chinese reactions to the organ one can note that it was precisely the technical/mechanical aspects which excited interest. Aesthetics and music were firmly secondary considerations. Thus, the organ was seen to be an instrument in the scientific, as well as or even more than in the musical sense of the word. In this way it presented a vector of technological exchange, one however not taken up until the twentieth century. This paper examines a selection of Chinese accounts of the pipe organ from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although few in number, these reports reflect a cross-section of Chinese society encountering and reacting to Western ‘others’ and Western cultural artifacts: official accounts, travel writing, and a high-culture literary essay, they display a variety of representations of incidents of cross-cultural confrontation, evaluation, and exchange.


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Since the suppression of the Jesuits in 1773, community members gradually took control of the Catholic community in Jiangnan. After waiting for decades and making great efforts to appeal for bringing back Jesuits to China, finally the first three “new Jesuits” arrived in Jiangnan in 1842. But soon, some Jiangnan Catholics realized that those “new Jesuits” were quite different from the “old Jesuits” that they had expected, so conflicts erupted. In order to fight against the authority of the bishop Ludovico de Besi(罗类思) and the “new Jesuits”, Jiangnan Catholics had to appeal to authority of former Chinese Catholic Texts which were written before 1800. In response to it, the missionaries not only discouraged Jiangnan Catholics from reading these texts, but also emphasized the authority of Latin books instead. Moreover, Besi chose two former Chinese Catholic Texts—Shengjiao qieyao(圣教切要) and Sizhong lüeyi(四终略意) to re-edit and republish. Both texts stood on his side and agreed with the conclusion of the Chinese Rites Controversy, which had aroused criticism from Jiangnan Catholics. Meanwhile, the involvement of Protestant missionaries made things more complicated. Walter Henry Medhurst(麦都思) republished some former Chinese Catholic Texts and revised them according to the discipline of Protestant, which was a threat to the authority of Catholicism. This paper aims to show the significant influence of former Chinese Catholic Texts in the 1840s, and demonstrate how the European missionaries and Jiangnan Catholics treated this heritage.

This paper discusses Aurora College for Women, which was under the management of the Sisters of the Sacred Heart in Shanghai from 1937 to 1951. It was an American-style university-college like other Sacred Heart colleges in the United States.This paper is crucial to understanding the Chinese Catholic Church in the first half of the twentieth century. It examines the only Catholic university for Chinese women, which has barely been studied. By focusing on Chinese women students, it contributes tremendously to the neglected area of Chinese women (particularly lay women) in the history of the Catholic Church in China before the 1950s. While historians have identified Chinese male elites in the Church, highly educated Chinese women have been ignored in scholarly studies. Thus, this paper is the first of its kind in the study of the Chinese Catholic Church, and attempts to offset the gender bias in the traditional approach to its history.

The paper introduces the major developments of the Chinese Rites Controversy (XVII-XVIII centuries), which had a devastating impact on China missionary endeavor. Special attention is given to religious and ideological background of the various missionary groups and personalities involved in the controversy. Particular attention is also given to the participation of Chinese converts and officials in the debate and the progress of the controversy.
The Rites controversy initiated in Fujian province in mid 1635, when newly arrived Dominican and Franciscan missionaries objected to the method of the Jesuits, introduced in China by Matteo Ricci S.J., and in Fujian by Giulio Aleni S.J. The Holy See was called in to declare whether the participation in the ancestral Rites was permissible for the Christians. Rome was unable to make a clear cut decision, and the controversy dragged on for several decades.
After the prohibition to the Rites issued by the Apostolic Vicar of Fujian Charles Maigrot MEP (1693) the Controversy regained momentum, with the personal involvement of China’s Emperor Kangxi and pope Clement XI. The Controversy reached an incredible level of complication and animosity. A vast amount of writings by clergy and intellectuals alike, were produces in China and in Europe. The two Papal Legations to China (XVII century) could not defuse the tension between Beijing and Rome, and among the various missionary groups. Actually the Legations, and the Roman decisions, added to the ambiguity, exasperation and bitterness.
From 1704, when pope Clement XI condemned the Rites, it was clear that Holy See was determined to disapprove the Rites, but also to save the China Mission from destruction. But the two objectives were not compatible. In 1742 Benedict XV condemned in the most solemn way the Rites, putting to a definitive end not only to the century-long controversy, but also to the China Mission initiated by Matteo Ricci, and indeed, creating the premises to the same suppression of the Society of Jesus (1773).
In 1939, due to the influence of Holy See Delegate to China Celso Costantini, the prohibition on the Rites is dramatically reversed.

The study introduces the major developments of the Chinese Rites Controversy (XVII-XVIII centuries), which had a devastating impact on China missionary endeavor. Special attention is given to religious and ideological background of the various missionary groups, to personalities involved in the controversy and to the Chinese converts and officials.
The Rites controversy initiated in Fujian province in mid 1635, when newly arrived Dominican and Franciscan missionaries objected to the method of the Jesuits, introduced in China by Matteo Ricci S.J., and in Fujian by Giulio Aleni S.J. The Holy See was called in to declare whether the participation in the ancestral Rites was permissible for the Christians. Rome was unable to make a clear cut decision, and the controversy dragged on for several decades.
After the prohibition to the Rites issued by the Apostolic Vicar of Fujian Charles Maigrot MEP (1693) the Controversy regained momentum, with the personal involvement of China’s Emperor Kangxi and pope Clement XI. The Controversy reached an incredible level of complication and animosity. A vast amount of writings by clergy and intellectuals alike, were produces in China and in Europe. The two Papal Legations to China (XVII century) could not defuse the tension between Beijing and Rome, and among the various missionary groups. Actually the Legations, and the Roman decisions, added to the ambiguity, exasperation and bitterness.
From 1704, when pope Clement XI condemned the Rites, it was clear that Holy See was determined to disapprove the Rites, but also to save the China Mission from destruction. But the two objectives were not compatible. In 1742 Benedict XV condemned in the most solemn way the Rites, putting to a definitive end not only to the century-long controversy, but also to the China Mission initiated by Matteo Ricci, and indeed, creating the premises to the same suppression of the Society of Jesus (1773).
In 1939, due to the influence of Holy See Delegate to China Celso Costantini, the prohibition on the Rites is dramatically reversed.

In 1846 the Vatican assigned responsibility for mission work in Tibet to the Paris-based Missions Étrangères de Paris (MEP). The first MEP missionary visited eastern Tibet in 1847 and established a mission at Bonga (Bang ga) in south eastern Kham in 1854. This paper focuses on the political issues which affected the Tibet mission’s development during the first 20 years of its existence. There are two main themes. The first is the relationship between the mission and the French state: the missionaries expected French diplomats to promote the Catholic cause in both China and Tibet. Their demands raised a second issue: to what extent was the Chinese government in a position to carry out France’s wishes in Tibet, even if it so desired?

Taiwan has a long, troubled, and complex history, as the island and its people were influenced by many different forces and cultures over the last 400 years. All these different periods also shaped the development of Christianity in Taiwan and either contributed to its growth or brought decline and hardship to the Christian churches. This paper presents an overview over the development of Christianity in Taiwan, and how it connected to other historical developments. In the appendix It also briefly introduces some key figures from Taiwan's church history.

The Luminous Way to the East offers a comprehensive survey of the historical, literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources of the first stage of the Christian mission to China. It explores the complex and multifaceted process of the interaction with the different cultural and religious milieux that the Church of the East experienced in its diffusion throughout Central Asia and into China during the first millennium.
The book provides an overview of the Christian presence in China during the Tang dynasty (618–907) by reconstructing the composition and organization of Christian communities, the geographical location of Christian monasteries, and the related historical events attested by the sources. Through a new and richly annotated English translation of the Chinese Christian texts produced in Tang China, the volume provides a documented look at what was the earliest, and perhaps the most extraordinary, encounter of Christianity with Chinese culture and religions (Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism). It shows how East Syriac Christianity in its eastward expansion along the Silk Road from Persia to China was open to the adoption of other languages and imagery and was able to enculturate the Christian teaching into new cultural and religious forms without losing its identity.

The Jesuit polymath Athanasius Kircher SJ is among the prominent writers of seventeenth-century Europe, and his China illustrata (1667) was one of the most celebrated and influential works on China of the period. The present essay examines the contexts and sources for Kircher’s description of the fall of the Ming dynasty and the conquest of China by the foreign Qing dynasty, a monumental event of global significance that attracted the attention of European scholarly circles and foreign powers alike. Strangely, while Kircher’s network of social contacts provided him access to the best sources available on the matter, including eyewitnesses, as this essay outlines, his presentation of the events in China is odd, inaccurate, and, at times, misleading.
However, a closer examination of Kircher’s sources — especially the first-hand accounts of events from fellow-Jesuits visiting Rome — reveals tensions, disagreements, and conflicting narratives that existed within the Jesuit China mission during the transition period and might have influenced the author. Kircher’s intellectual enterprise was always intertwined with his religious piety and promotion of the Society of Jesus. Thus, this essay proposes that his ‘mistakes’ can be seen as an attempt to reconcile contradictory voices among the Jesuit missionaries and to offer a unified narrative to European readers, reshaped to fit the author’s devout vision of history as well as the religiopolitical needs of the Society of Jesus and its China mission.

19世纪中叶，天主教满洲宗座代牧区（Apostolic Vicariate  of Manchuria）成立，由法国巴黎外方传教会管理。与中国其他具有天主教传统的地区不同，19世纪之前，涉足中国东北的天主教传教士极少，而东北的天主教徒则多为来自山东等地的天主教移民。19世纪欧洲天主教传教运动复兴，法国尤盛。在此大背景下，由法国传教士组成的巴黎外方传教会成为满洲代牧区建立和发展的主要推动力量。在其前辈传教士中国传教工作的基础上，这批19世纪的传教士具有新的特点。例如，他们并不认同早期耶稣会士的传教策略，他们致力于建立一套严格有序的教会制度、刻意强调天主教教义与仪式的严谨、以地方天主教移民家庭为中心建立天主教村落、广泛建立要理学房与天主教学校、关注女性教徒。在东北，许多天主教村落延续至今，与19世纪这批传教士的工作密切相关。本文基于笔者过去数年对巴黎外方传教会满洲代牧区档案文献的发掘、整理和解读，力图梳理19世纪天主教在东北地区的发展过程，并将此历史过程置于19世纪欧洲天主教复兴的历史背景之中。笔者还希望将文献的爬梳和文本解读，与新的史学分析方法相结合，探讨如何重新发掘和利用教会材料，进一步扩展“基督教在中国”这一主题的研究视野。

Meister Eckhart is known for having developed a sophisticated form of inclusivist Christian universalism in the late Middle Ages. This universalism arose from the particular " globalizing " contexts of his times, for which there are real parallels in our own day. The author argues that in key respects, Eckhart's ethical universalism shows strong affinities with Confucian principles, and can be informed by these as set out historically by Xinzhong Yao and in a contemporary setting by Tu Weiming. In the conclusion, the author sketches the possible influence of Confucianism on a future Christianity, in the light of the Eckhartian universalist inheritance.

Lansând o viziune interdisciplinară (elemente de istoria culturii și a ideilor, religii comparate, sinologie, teologie comparată, literatură comparată), China harului vă invită la o călătorie în profunzimea universului cultural chinez, în dimensiunea sa mitico-religioasă, privit prin ochii protagoniștilor contactului dintre lumea creștină europeană și cea chineză — misionarii ajunși în China din Siria în secolele VII-XIII, catolici franciscani și iezuiți în secolele XIII-XVIII, anglicani, ortodocși. Cartea oferă prima dată cititorilor români o amplă panoramă istorică a impactului — adesea dramatic — dintre cele două lumi. E totodată povestea uneia dintre cele mai frumoase aventuri ale spiritului din istoria umanității: epopeea întâlnirii a două mari civilizații care au evoluat, câteva milenii, aproape independent una de alta.
La temelia Chinei se află o semioză sacră, un model
arhetipal sau cod exemplar, care consacră o origine
mitică a poporului chinez și codifică o anume relație a
lui cu divinitatea. Această semioză exemplară traversează întreaga cultură chineză, ce stă sub semnul fulgurantului grafem, al oximoronicei hieroglife înscrise de divinitate în trupul unei muritoare prin zămislirea lui Fu Xi – legendarul inventator al scrisului și autor al Yi Jing-ului.
Rafinați și cultivați, manierați și erudiți, cărturarii Rú erau o elită intelectuală cu o noblețe dobândită prin studiu și cizelarea propriului caracter moral prin practicarea virtuților, în primul rând omenia și dreptatea. Termenul ce desemna virtutea, De 德, a fost echivalat și cu cel de har. În China antică termenul Rú 儒 avea sensuri ca delicat, moale, fraged, blând, a alina, a educa, fiind asociat cu purificarea rituală dinaintea ceremoniilor religioase pe care le oficiau ca „preoți” în dinastia Zhou, dar și cu natura lor amabilă, curtenitoare, conciliantă, ce contrasta cu duritatea și brutalitatea altor clase sociale precum războinicii. Mandarinii Rú cultivau Calea vechilor împărați-înțelepți, căutând să creeze o societate a armoniei, regulilor cuviinței, virtuților și guvernării binevoitoare. Inițierea ritual-religioasă, ceremonială, filosofică, științifică (astrologică, matematică, geomantică) și morală a clasei Rú era inseparabilă de cea a scrierii. Doar literații Rú aveau competența grafică: puteau descifra și desena caractere ce neinițiaților le păreau simboluri sacre. Dacă scrierea chineză va fi fost la origine o revelare a sacrului prin incizii și tușe de pensulă – o hierofanie grafică sau o grafofanie –, mai putem crea un termen pentru puterea clasei Rú – cel de grafocrație: puterea cunoscătorilor hieroglifelor. Rú erau stăpânii semnelor scrise. Scrierea ideografică privilegia o cultură de tip vizual, generând un tipar mental ce opera cu asocieri concrete, nu cu noțiuni abstracte. Îi putem numi așadar și optocrați, stăpânii vizualului.

Title of MA Thesis:

Captivating God’s Heart: A History of Independent Christianity, Fundamentalism and Gender in Chin Lien Bible Seminary and the Singapore Christian Evangelistic League, 1935-1997

Supervisor: A/Prof Bruce Lockhart

University/Department: NUS History Department

Completed: Oct 2015

Click on link for direct access to the dissertation.

Madame Chiang Kai-shek was one of the most outstanding women of the twentieth century. The wife of Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Republic of China, she exercised immense influence over her husband, the government, and the entire nation. With a command of English matched by few and rivalled by non, she served as Chiang's voice to the world, especially the United States. At the same time, she was known as a Christian. The complexities of her personality, involvement in public life, and Christian witness are hard to unravel. This article attempts to paint a picture both sympathetic and critical.

Christian missionaries play an important role in the history of the relationship between China and Europe. Their presence in China has been widely explored, but little attention has been paid to the role played by the Bible in their preaching. From 13th to 19th century, although they did not translate the Bible, Catholic missionaries preached the Gospel orally or with catechisms. It was only in the 20th century that the Franciscan friar Gabriele Allegra decided to go to China as a missionary to translate the Holy Scriptures into Chinese. He arrived in China in 1931 and translated from 1935 to 1961. The first complete single-volume Catholic Bible in Chinese was published in 1968. After presenting the historical background of Allegra's activity, a textual analysis of some passages of his translation will be presented. This study will verify the closeness of the work by Allegra to the original Greek text and the validity of some particular translation choices.

The history of Christianity in China has become a very promising field in recent years. This paper uses the example of a recent study on the history of Catholicism in Manchuria
and examines new trends in the study of Christianity in China. By focusing on different
perspectives, new sources, theories and methodologies, this paper offers a reflection on the purpose of systematic exploration of church records. It further examines the means of analysis and interpretation of historical documents using interdisciplinary methods within a global perspective.

In the sixteenth century, Franciscan spiritual literature started to disseminate widely all over the world. There has been much research on how Franciscan literature was transplanted in Latin America, but there is presently little research on its diffusion in East Asia. This paper shows how a sixteenth-century Franciscan treatise on meditation came to be translated into Chinese and published at Canton in 1694.

Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China. Harvard Yenching Institute Monograph Series, no. 69. Harvard University Asia Center and Harvard University Press, 2009

Recipient of the 2011 Joseph Levenson Book Prize for best scholarly work on pre-1900 China, awarded by the China and Inner Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies.

Twenty-one reviews, 2010-2016 : reviewed by Nicolas Standaert, in Frontiers of History in China, 5.2, 2010, pp. 340-42; by Gianni Criveller, in Bibliographia Missionaria, 74, 2010, pp. 479-482; by Lars Laamann, in Journal of Chinese Religions, 38, 2010, pp. 120-122; by Luke Clossey, in The American Historical Review, 116.2, April 2011, pp. 426-27; by David Mungello, in Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 41.4, Spring 2011, pp. 676-77; by Don Baker, in Itinerario, 35.1, 2011, pp. 125-27; by Henrietta Harrison, in Sino-Western Cultural Relations Journal, 33, 2011, pp. 77-80; by Ryan Dunch, in The Journal of Asian Studies, 70, August 2011, pp. 818-820; by Robert Entenmann, in The Catholic Historical Review, 97.4, October 2011, pp. 875-877; by Isabelle Landry-Deron, in Annales. Histoire, Sciences sociales, 66.4, 2011, pp. 1118-1120; by Daniel Bays, in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 71.2, December 2011, pp. 364-369; by R. G. Tiedemann, in Studies in World Christianity, 17.3, December 2011, pp. 294-295; by Jeff Kyong-McClain, in Journal of World History, 22.4, December 2011, pp. 886-889; by Hubert Seiwert, in Monumenta Serica. Journal of Oriental Studies, 59, 2011, pp. 565-568; by Jean-Paul Wiest, in Missiology, 39, 2011, pp. 410-11; by Joseph Lee Tse-hei, in China Review International, 18.3, 2011, pp. 382-386; by Adam Yuet Chau, in Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture, 81.2, June 2012, pp. 508-510; by Haruko Nawata Ward, in The Sixteenth Century Journal, 33.1, Spring 2012; by Gail King, in History of Religions, 52.1, August 2012, pp. 83-85; Xiao Ruiyin 蕭芮吟 (Jui-Yin Hsiao), Lishi renleixue xuekan 歷史人類學學刊, 13.1, 2015, pp. 140–44;  Keith Knapp, in Religious Studies Review, 42.1, March 2016, pp. 7-8].