History of Missions in China

Z většiny latinsky psaných rukopisů cestovní zprávy Odorika z Pordenone, františkánský řeholník a poutník na dvůr Velikého chána, se dozvídáme, že byl osobně přítomen setkání františkánských bratří s Velikým chánem. Odorik strávil tři až čtyři roky v Chánbalyku (dnešním Pekingu), hlavním městě mongolsko-čínské říše Jüan (1271–1368) ve dvacátých letech 14. století. V textu známém jako De reverentia magni Chanis je popsána úcta, kterou údajně projevil Veliký chán Jesün Temür (Yesuntemur qaɣan) (vládl 1323–1328) křesťanské víře zastupované křížem. K události došlo prý během chánovy cesty z Chánbalyku (Ta-tu) do letního paláce v Šang-tu. Pouze velmi malá část latinských rukopisů, které vznikly na území středo-jižního Německa (recensio Germanica) ve druhé polovině 14. století, obsahuje pasáž, obecně nazývanou De pradicatione magno Chani. Zachycuje, jako jediný latinsky psaný pramen, Odorikovo kázání před Velikých chánem Chošilou (Qošila, Kusele, Qutuɣtu qaɣan) (vládl 1328–1329).

From major part of Latin manuscripts of the travel report of Odoric of Pordenone, a Franciscan friar and pilgrim to the court of the Great Khan, we learn that he was personally present at an encounter of the Franciscan friars with the Great Khan. Odoric spent three or four years in Khanbaliq (now Beijing), the capital of the Yuan Empire (1271–1368) in the 1320s. In the text known as De reverentia magni Chanis is described the esteem, which allegedly Yesün Temür Khan (reigned 1323–1328) showed to the Christian faith represented by the cross. The event said to occurred during the Great Khan’s journey from Khanbaliq to his Summer Palace in Shangdu. Only a very small part of the Latin manuscripts, which arose in the central-southern Germany (recensio Germanica) in the second half of the 14th century, contain the passage, commonly known as De pradicatione magno Chani. It records, as the only source in Latin, Odoric’s predication before the Khutughtu Khan (Qošila, Kusele, reigned 1328–1329).

This Master's thesis is an examination of the life of Samuel Wells Williams (1812-1884).  During his long term of service in and around China Williams served as a missionary printer for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, as translator for Commodore Perry's expeditions to Japan, as Secretary and Interpreter for the United States Legation to China, and as the inaugural Professor of Chinese at Yale University.
Specifically, the purpose of this work is to investigate the years of Williams's service to the American Board as one of the first handful of American Protestant missionaries to China.  Circumstances in Williams's life that are infrequently mentioned in contemporary scholarship on missions in China are highlighted in an effort to introduce new categories of discussion into the field.  The paper is specifically interested in combining the best insights of the theological and historical disciplines.  Topics examined include the Sunday school movement, life and evangelism in Canton before the Treaty settlements, missionary views on opium and war, American millennialism, differing views on missionary methods (with reference to Rufus Anderson), and the role of providence in Williams's faith.
The paper covers the years from Williams's birth in 1812 until Williams's decision to resign from the employ of the American Board in early 1857.

The proscription of Catholicism in Qing China has long been considered as the result of the well-known rites controversy – a symbol of the supposed incompatibility between Confucian and Christian values – and held responsible for the failure of Catholic missions on Chinese soil. A detailed analysis of Chinese and Western sources however demonstrates that the proscription policy launched in 1724 was doomed to failure, due to partial and ineffective measures. Within a few decades European missionaries were reduced to secondary targets while Chinese converts, soon supplanted by sectarians temporarily converted to Christianity, were establishing themselves as the principal targets of the government in the early nineteenth century. This article is thus intended to rethink the idea that Catholicism may have been considered by the Chinese authorities just as an imported religion spread by Western missionaries. In doing so, it complements recent research conducted on Christianity in China, and more generally in East Asia.

En este trabajo queremos exponer, analizar y valorar la acción
misional desarrollada por la Orden de Agustinos Recoletos en aquel contexto misional. Aquella obra misional no se comprende sin estar insertada en una historia misional de mayor envergadura, que envolvió a toda la Iglesia de China y que provocó un cambio profundo en el modo de concebir la obra misional en relación con las exigencias evangélicas y con las exigencias socioculturales de la China del siglo XX.

The French Jesuit mission in Shanghai in the mid-nineteenth century created a unique musical workshop with the construction of a pipe organ with bamboo pipes in 1856-57. Destroyed in the Cultural Revolution in 1966, the 'Bamboo Organ of Tungkadoo' nonetheless had a kind of legendary status and remained an artifact of cultural memory into the 1990s. This article, relying on unpublished documents found in archives in France, reveals the full story of the instrument, and the many other bamboo organs constructed during the era of the Taiping Rebellion and the Second Opium War, and identifies the one surviving example, now in Paris. It also explores the symbolic importance of these cross-cultural instruments and offers a new perspective on aesthetic and musical exchanges in an age of imperialism.

First published at www.globalchinacenter.org, this review summarizes some of the main themes of the Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, a massive reference work. It discusses these topics: Who were the missionaries? Where did they live and serve?  What did they do? This, the longest section, briefly surveys such activities as Bible translation and literature production; preaching; education; introducing China to the West; medical work; famine relief; and their relation to Western Imperialism. That final sections are What were they like (as persons)? The missionaries' legacy.

Matteo Ricci's strategy in China was aimed at an ascent to Beijing, which the Macerata-born missionary reached in 1601, completing the seventh and last leg of his journey to the capital of the Ming Empire.
Ricci was a missionary who never gave up elaborating strategies to achieve his objectives. In this very important mission, he was ingenious and as capable of marking an epoch in evangelization as Paul of Tarsus. Paul had used many strategies: he learned from mistakes and failures, and he altered his approaches without ever losing sight of his goals of preaching the Gospel and founding Christian communities.
Ricci and Valignano
Ricci and Longobardo
Dressed like Buddhist monks
Ricci and Ruggieri
Accommodation
The light of reason
The Christian Doctrine and the Cathechism
Indirect and direct preaching
The Terms Controversy
The Great Father-Mother
Promotion of Chinese clergy
Autonomy from Macao
‘Scientific apostolate’
The Door of Friendship
“Books speak better than the mouth”

Voce del Dizionario Biografico degli italiani su "Angelo Zottoli, 1826-1902", missionario in Cina e traduttore di testi filosofici e religiosi sia in cinese che in latin.

Entry from the Biographical Dictionary of the Italians on "Angelo Zottoli, 1826-1902", an Italian missionary in China. He was a famous translator of philosophical and religious texts into Chinese and Latin.

The article examines the missions in China in modern times. The 16th and 17th centuries were periods of significant success for Roman Catholic missions. These two centuries differ from the preceding period, as evidenced in the radical changes that took place in relation to the organization of missions and their relationship with their European bases. The world was divided into areas under the Portuguese padroado and areas under the Spanish patronato. The system was later completed by the establishment of the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, under the auspices of the Roman Curia. The beginning of the Catholic missions to China dates to the second half of the 16th century, but the real flowering of the missions began with the participation of the new missionaries coming to China after the 1680s. The Chinese Rites controversy in the 17th and 18th centuries was one of the factors which led to the prohibition of Christianity and the expulsion of Catholic missionaries from China. Nevertheless, some missionaries were illegally active in China from 1724 onwards.

The beginning of the Modern era (ca. 1400) was marked by two great shifts: the start of the global age of empire building, and of large-scale population movements around the world. As more people travelled for longer distances, art and culture increasingly moved with them. This began an accelerated process of inter-and intracultural exchange. European art and culture, which formerly had been a part of territories and landscapes exclusive to Europe, now 'territorialized' parts of non-European lands from the sixteenth century onward. The Jesuit missions in Asia not only brought Western architecture, music, poetry, and painting (and the integral aesthetic that went along with these modes) but also established an enduring resonance of these things. This paper explores resonance as an example of how East and West have always found meeting points in the arts, even when other media and discourses proved not to be compatible.

At the turn of May and June 2014 we are commemorating the ninetieth anniversary since the convening of the first Chinese Council, which took place in Shanghai from 15 May to 12 June 1924. At his birth was the Archbishop, later Cardinal, Mgr. Celso Costantini (1876–1958), a big supporter of Chinese culture and history, and the first Apostolic Delegate of the Holy See to China (between 1922 and 1933). Mgr. Costantini put a lot of effort into improving the formation of the local Chinese clergy.
Na přelomu května a června 2014 uplyne devadesát let od svolání prvního čínského koncilu, který se konal v Šanghaji od 15. května do 12. června 1924. U jeho zrodu stál tehdejší arcibiskup, pozdější kardinál, mons. Celso Costantini (1876–1958), velký příznivec čínské kultury a historie a první apoštolský delegát Svatého stolce v Číně (delegatus apostolicus in Sinis) (mezi lety 1922 a 1933). Mons. Costantini věnoval hodně úsilí zlepšení formování místních čínských duchovních.

The pipe organ first appeared in China in 1599/1600 with a positive organ built in Macau. This was not meant to be a liturgical instrument, but rather a sample of Western technology and ingenuity. During the eventful reign of the Kangxi emperor (r. 1661-1722) the pipe organ enjoyed a privileged position at the imperial court due to Kangxi’s personal fascination with and appreciation of the instrument (if not its European repertoire). While the presence of the pipe organ in the earlier part of his reign has been documented by a number of scholars, its position during the worst years of the Rites Controversy in the first quarter of the eighteenth century has been less well-understood. This paper discusses this period, especially from the arrival in Beijing of Cardinal Maillard de Tournon in 1705 to the death of Kangxi in 1722. Even while the Controversy raged, undermining in the process Kangxi’s opinion of the whole Christian mission in general, the pipe organ nevertheless made further inroads in China as a sample of Western science, art, religion, and culture. At the same time, it began a gradual transition in perception (as well as reality) from an artifact of foreign tribute to a transcultural commodity.

This paper continues the study of how different Christian scholars have viewed Confucius and Confucianism. James Legge was arguable the greatest Protestant interpreter of the Chinese classics. His evaluation of Confucius and Confucianism changed over time, and was very influential. This paper examines his opinions of Confucius and of Confucianism, and then his comparison and contrast of the two.

This book reveals the story of François Ravary, Jesuit missionary, musician, and organ builder. The mastermind behind the construction of the bamboo organs of nineteenth-century Shanghai, Ravary’s unpublished letters from China present a vivid picture of the excitement and crises surrounding the Roman Catholic mission in the often-violent integration of global space of this time. Focusing on an individual life, this study adds needed perspective to histories of the treaty-port era. By shifting the inquiry towards a nuanced, empirical, and refocused evaluation of the landscape, Ravary is revealed as a humanist in the Christian tradition, curious about Chinese society and culture, as well as the force behind China’s first brass band, first school orchestra, and other landmarks of Sino-European musical convergence. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in nineteenth-century China studies, cultural histories, and the diffusion of Western art practices.

Please note: the book must be purchased from the publisher (there is an e-book available as well.) Only an image of the cover is provided here.

The mission field has always been a rich source of case studies for exploring the interaction between theory and praxis in ministry. The question of whether or not to cooperate on the ground with other missionaries is a recurring locus of contention, where abstract policies often come into conflict with the practical realities of the mission field. For some missionaries, the immediacy of the field context relativises previously held convictions or associations, enabling them to embrace a kind of practical ecumenism on the field. This ecumenical cooperation typically expresses itself in combined worship, mutual care, and pooled ministry information, yet only rarely extends to shared ministry projects. Utilising past and present examples from Protestant missions in China, this chapter will examine the tendency of field workers to relativise the directives and policies of their sending agencies in favour of a practical ecumenism on the ground.

Welsh Baptist missionary to China Timothy Richard (1845–1919) was once widely regarded as “one of the greatest missionaries whom any branch of the Church, whether Roman Catholic, Russian Orthodox, or Protestant, has sent to China.” Today, few have heard of Richard and his remarkable lifetime of ministry in China.

As the first critical examination of Richard’s missionary identity, this groundbreaking historical study traces the narrative of Richard’s early life in Wales and his formative first two decades of service in China. Richard’s adaptations to the common evangelistic techniques of his day, his interest in learning from grassroots Chinese sectarian religions, his integration of evangelism and famine relief during the North China Famine (1876–79), his strategic decision to evangelize Chinese elites, and his complicated relationships with Hudson Taylor and other China missionaries are all explored through the writings and personal letters of Richard and his contemporaries. The resulting portrait represents a significant revision to existing interpretations of this influential China missionary, emphasizing his deep empathy for the people of China and his abiding evangelical identity. Readable and relevant, Encountering China provides a new generation with an introduction to this lost legend of China mission.

With examples from China’s Christian past and present, this presentation will explore the shifting authority relationship between local Christians and expatriate missionaries. Reflections on these different phases in ministry partnership will then be used to illuminate current and future trends in the Chinese church.