Missionaries in China

Review of "Chinese Characteristics" by Arthur H. Smith (1894).  The American missionary who lived in China for 52 years described 26 "characterisics" of the Chinese people, drawn from observations of family and village life. This is a sociology of impressions, not data or fieldwork or surveys, which were hardly conceived of a century ago. Smith's introduction to the work addressed many of its potential shortcomings, so while there is generalization, Smith aimed to be free of dogmatism and arrogance. Readers can judge how successful he was.

Chinese linguists of the past had never compiled descriptive grammars of their language. Only the Catholic missionaries in China during the 16th and 17th century, pressed by practical needs and by propaganda exigencies, engaged themselves into writing works to describe Chinese. In doing so, the Jesuits addressed their interest mainly to the language used by the learned class who detained the power, the so‐called Mandarin. Of many of these grammars we have knowledge only through references in other works, but they have apparently gone lost; this is because the most of them used to circulate in manuscript form and were never printed. Thus, so far, the Dominican friar Francisco Varo has been credited to be the first to have his grammar, Arte de la lengua mandarina, published in 1703.
According to previous studies, the grammar of the Chinese language of the Jesuit missionary Martino Martini was probably written some time between 1651 and 1652, during two long stops that Martini was forced to make while traveling back to Rome as Procurator of the China mission. It circulated widely in manuscript form in Europe, becoming a useful tool to learn Chinese for intellectuals and future missionaries, presumably without ever being printed.
Martini’s original manuscript has not been retraced yet. Nevertheless, a fair number of copies have been found in different European cities and this enables us today to retrace the development stages Martini’s grammar followed in the tangled series of passages from one owner to the next. As a matter of fact, the manuscripts that have been found through this research, together with those that had been discovered in the past, even though very similar in the general organization, show substantial differences and, in some cases, the intervention of other authors.
The investigations conducted for this study have also been able to prove that Martini’s grammar of the Chinese language had actually been printed and attached to a few copies of 1696 edition of Mélchisedec Thévenot’s Relations des divers voyages curieux, thus becoming the first grammar ever printed of Mandarin Chinese.
Through the comparative analysis of the extant copies in both manuscript and printed form, and at the same time trying to separate the contribution to the original work given by other scholars who possessed it, the present study aims at reconstructing the evolution course of Martini’s grammar from the older Grammatica Sinica to the refined and annotated copy of the Grammatica Linguae Sinensis. This last version is included into this study in annotated transcript and English translation.

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.

Valère Rondelez (Xénia de Heering, translator). 2015. A Faithful Servant, Samt'andjimba (1816-1900) IN Gerald Roche and CK Stuart (eds) Asian  Highlands Perspectives 36: Mapping the Monguor, 116-138, 301-332.

ABSTRACT
Samt'andjimba (1816?-1900) was a Mangghuer (Tu). Originally a Tibetan Buddhist monk, he converted to Christianity, and spent much of his life in the company of Christian missionaries. The
Lazarists, Gabet and Huc, who traveled across Mongolia, Western China, and Tibet made him famous. This biographical article provides details of Samt'andjimba's life and work.

KEYWORDS
Christianity in China, Huc and Gabet, Mangghuer, missionaries, Qinghai, Sanchuan, Tu

The article examines the Franciscan missions in China in modern times, with a specific focus on the members of the Bohemian Franciscan Province. The 16th and 17th centuries were periods of significant success for Roman Catholic missions, including the Franciscans. 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. Among the Franciscan missionaries to China there were four friars from the Czech Crown lands, who were working in China during the time of the illegal missions. They were among the most important representatives of the Franciscan missions in China, along with their Italian confreres.

The Chinese world expanded beyond its imperial borders thanks to the development of a port area with a different social dynamic than what was found in the provinces in the empire's interior. Networks of merchants, migrants, and pirates, along with agents defending the imperial interests and its ideas, were in constant movement throughout Southeast Asia and much of the Pacific region. In the Philippines, this situation allowed Spanish Catholic missionaries to work with Chinese or Sangleys before entering China. What did this situation represent for the China Mission? What kind of missionary dynamics developed between the Chinese or the Sangleys? Can we talk about a Sangley Mission?

A brief biographical article on the lives of Louis Magrath King, a British Consular Official stationed on the China-Tibet border from 1913-1922, and his wife, Rinchen Lhamo, author of "We Tibetans" (Seeley Service, London: 1926), who is thought to have been the first Tibetan to permanently settle in Britain.

En la segunda mitad del siglo XVII, Koxinga estableció su poder en las costas del sur y este de la China, en especial en Amoy. Después de su conquista de la isla de Formosa, hasta entonces bajo el dominio holandés, quiso expandir su poderío incorporando las islas Filipinas. Un testimonio excepcional de esta historia fue Victorio Riccio, un misionero establecido en la misión dominica de
Amoy, que recibió la suficiente consideración por parte de Koxinga para que éste le enviara como embajador a las islas con el fin de conseguir el vasallaje y sumisión de los españoles. A partir de ese momento, la historia del “pirata” chino y la de este dominico quedaron estrechamente entrelazadas. La embajada enviada por Koxinga fue uno de los detonantes del levantamiento que en 1662
protagonizaron los sangleyes del parián de Manila. El testimonio de Victorio Riccio, inédito, en su historia Hechos de la orden de Predicadores en el Imperio de China, y el testimonio de Fernández de Navarrete que glosa el texto de Riccio en sus Tratados  historicos, politicos, ethicos y religiosos de la monarchia de China,
aparecidos en 1676, constituyen dos fuentes importantes para la historia de Koxinga.

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.

This article examines the description of the Changchun Garden in eighteenth-century Beijing, featured in Matteo Ripa's "Storia della Fondazione della Congregazione e del Collegio de' Cinesi". An Italian missionary at the court of the Kangxi Emperor, Ripa had a chance to see and describe both the imperial parks and the intricacies of Chinese court etiquette. His detailed account, a precious source of information on the Changchun park, was accompanied by commentaries aimed at explaining the differences between "European" and "Chinese" aesthetic values. Therefore, this article offers a critical analysis of the account as a historical source, discussing the accuracy of some of the details described by Ripa, and subsequently provides an interpretation of the way he perceived Chinese parks, with an emphasis on his explanations of the "Chinese style" of laying out gardens. Finally, the last part of the article is dedicated to a comparison between a Neapolitan nativity scene (presepio) and the Qing gardens as drawn by Ripa at the end of his description, in order to demonstrate the "artificial naturalness" of Chinese parks.

This article presents succinctly a review of the life and work of Juan González de  Mendoza  (1545-1618),  religious  of  the  Order  of  St.  Augustine  that proclaimed himself “chronicler of China”. In  1585  he  published  the "Historia  del Gran Reino de la China", a book that gave him certain fame in scholarly circles of his time.Reviewing to Mendoza and his text involves asking what China was portrayed by the  author,  from  which  sources  he  obtained his news and the purpose that pursued his publication. His work became from the  moment of its appearance  a great  success  due to the increasing  demand  for newsabout China in Renaissance Europe. Although  Mendoza had  never been to  Asia, he developed a meticulous historiographical work with the sources at his disposal. At  the  same  time,  the  work had  to serve  multiple  interests: political interests because of the origin of the text (a failed embassy of Philip II of Spain to Ming China);  missionaries interests according to a  competitive atmosphere with different religious orders fighting between them  to take place  in  the evangelization race of the East;  finally,  personal  interests  due  to  the  high personal expectations of Mendoza deposited in his 'Historia'. His contribution is a decisive episode in the building of the image of China in Early Modern Europe

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.

Tato kniha shrnuje známé údaje o Odorikovi a jeho cestě do Číny a zpět, včetně některých nedávných studií zejména od italských badatelů, na pozadí vývoje v Mongolské říši během 13. a 14. století a jeho styků s Evropou. Četné kopie Odorikova vyprávění (jak v originále, tak ve verzích ve francouzštině, italštině, němčině a dalších), které se dochovaly do naší doby, především ze 14. století, ukazují, jak cestopis rychle získal popularitu. Odorik značně rozšířil znalosti o jihovýchodní a východní Asii v Evropě. Nejcennější je jeho popis Číny, měst na jejím pobřeží a zejména hlavního města, kde strávil nejméně tři roky. Odorikova zpráva se stala cenným zdrojem pro nejaktuálnější kartografické dílo 14. století, Katalánský atlas (kolem 1375). Významnou částí je přehled rukopisů Odorikova cestopisu, jejich edic a prací o Odorikovi (téměř 900 položek).

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”

ABSTRAKT Mezi misionáři v Číně hráli nejvýznamnější roli členové Tovaryšstva Ježíšova, jezuité. Po téměř dvě stě let nejenže měli velkou početní převahu mezi misionáři, ale rovněž vyvinuli metodu akomodace pro evangelizaci Číny a hráli významnou roli na císařském dvoře v Pekingu. U čchingských císařů byli oblíbeni pro svou učenost, jelikož byli vzděláni v různých vědách, jako například v matematice, hudbě, kartografii a geografii. Na pobřeží Číny pronikali již od poloviny 16. století, avšak první misie na čínské pevnině vznikly až po roce 1582. ABSTRACT Among the missionaries in China a major role played members of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. In course of almost two hundred years they had not only a great numerical superiority among the missionaries, but also developed a method of accommodation for the evangelization of China and played an important role in the imperial court in Beijing. They were popular at Qing emperors for their erudition because they were educated in various sciences such as mathematics, music, geography and cartography. They penetrated on the coast of China since the mid-16th century, but the first missions on the Chinese mainland were founded after the year of 1582.

Dedicating his life to the welfare of children, Dr. J. Calvitt Clarke (1887-1970) was one of the twentieth century’s most successful charitable fundraisers.  He was also a successful author with many published novels under his belt.  In addition, he left many novel manuscripts, most in fragments.  A draft of a completed novel, “Chinese Nurse,” written about 1940 or 1941, begins as another of Clarke’s love novels of the 1930s.  The manuscript's second half follows nurse Juanita Ferber and her friends through their training for and travel to China to the horrors and bravery of the struggle against Japanese aggression. "Chinese Nurse" is significant for it marks Dr. Clarke’s only attempt that I am aware of, of moving his plots to China as he was forming China’s Children Fund, the forerunner of Christian Children’s Fund and ChildFund International.

Abstract: This paper looks at the changing perceptions and attitudes of Westerners residing in China between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries; it sets out a case study focussing on the writings and biographies of one family (Isabelle & Rev. Alexander Williamson, Veronica & Paul Henry King, and Louis Magrath King & Rinchen Lhamo), who over three generations became involved in Western moves to compel China to ‘open up’ to a Western-led system of global commerce or ‘free trade’, as well as Western systems of political and religious thought after the Opium Wars of the mid-nineteenth century. The first generation of this family arrived in China hoping to introduce the perceived benefits of Western morals and modernity through the means of Christian missionary work. Subsequent generations, however, became fully integrated into the expatriate treaty port milieu in Customs and Consular Service roles which necessarily engendered a different kind of working relationship with the Chinese, and, arguably, thereby altered their viewpoint and helped to modify their sympathies towards Chinese cultural and political sovereignty. Ultimately, this enabled them to realise and see beyond the finite limitations of the system of ‘informal empire’ which the Western powers sought to impose upon China.

François Ravary (1823-91) was a French Jesuit, an alumnus of Issenheim, Brugelette, and Laval, who went to China in 1856 to join the Jiangnan mission. He remained there for the rest of his life and is remembered for one achievement: the construction of ‘The Bamboo Organ of Tungkadoo’, completed in 1857. His mission, however, extended in other directions, most of them connected with music, the fine arts, and education in the context of various intercultural modes of exchange. Some of his letters have survived, detailing the rich musical culture he helped to create in mid-nineteenth century Shanghai. One of these narrates the chilling account of the murder of Luigi Massa S.J. by the Taiping in 1860. A corrective to a few details surrounding this tragedy, it also highlights the continuing importance of source study, epistolary research, individual (as opposed to collective) evaluation, and translation.

In the first half of the twentieth century Hungarian Jesuit monks and fathers undertook missionary jobs in the rural North-China, helping the poor and less life cultivated Chinese villagers, sharing their poverty, famine, fears of the turbulent decades of the Celestial Empire's modern history.  The first members of the Society of Jesus from the small Central-European state arrived in the 1920s, and started their evangilizing service under their French brothers, whose country – after the Treaty of Tianjin (1858) became the main patronizer of the catholic faith. The fréres from the Champagne Province already run a flourishing mission in Xianxian, that the Boxer Uprising wrecked in 1900. But the mission could recover, and as the faithful community grew, the Jesuits faced with the need to involve other brothers from other countries and  provinces too. So the Hungarians had the chance to obtain their own missionary territory, and later the independence from the French. From 1924, when the later bishop Miklós Szarvas first set his foot on Daming prefectural city's streets, until the 1950's when the mission was officially abolished, a very important episode of the modern Sino-Hungarian relationships had taken its place. Péter Vámos' book introduces us into this curious history of few dozens of brave and determined fathers who came to offer their life acting according to their faith, to a nation thousands of kilometres away from their homeland.

This study explores the affective realm of medical missionaries serving in China. What factors shaped their desire to go to China in the first place? How did they express their sentiments about people, place, and work in their personal diaries and letters home? Did these feelings change over time? What are the differences between the public and private, and professional and personal discourses used in their published and unpublished writings? Above all, to what extant did the Western foreigners empathize with their Chinese subjects and hosts? To what extant was this empathy reciprocated? Perhaps the strongest bonds that people from any two nations can forge are the ties of sentiment, much of which goes unrecorded and undocumented. However, the personal diaries and letters of medical missionaries working in China in the Yale University Western Medicine in China archives offer a unique opportunity to explore this realm of affect between two nations.

This paper aims to shed light on the contribution made to the field of missionary linguistics by an Austrian missionary, Joseph Maximilian Pruggmayr OCD (Order of Discalced Carmelites) (1713–1791) who spent almost fifty years in China in the second half of the 18th century. Jesuits played the leading role in mediating between the Chinese court and Europe in those years and their contributions sometimes eclipse the works of other missionaries belonging to different religious orders.
Pruggmayr is among them and compiled a very complete Italian Chinese dictionary entitled Vocabolario Italiano-Cinese (from now on also indicated as VIC). The dictionary made a long journey from China to Europe and although it is mentioned in some sources (always as anonymous) it has never been studied. This dictionary seems to have been neglected by scholars, which is difficult to understand, since – as will be demonstrated below – it deserves our attention, not only because of its richness, but also its features. Though compiled within a very well-established missionary tradition, the dictionary is in fact based on the Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca and makes use of a specific romanization Pruggmayr based on the Spanish-Portuguese system adapted to Italian orthography. This paper highlights Pruggmayr’s contribution in the field of lexicographical material and focuses on the features this dictionary possesses compared with other sources, also given the
value it possibly has since it was compiled in a span of time which ‘recorded’ the passage from Nanjing-based Mandarin to Beijing-based Mandarin.

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.

Text read at the Seminar "Il Museo cinese di Parma nella prima metà del Novecento", Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza, in collaborazione con Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Zentralinstitut für Katolische Theologie, Science and production of knowledge about China during the early modern age, SARAS – La Sapienza, convened by Elisabetta Corsi, Dottorato di ricerca SARAS, curriculum History of Religions coordinated by Sergio Botta, in «Missionary objects and collecting (16th-20th centuries)», Dispersed workshop organized by Sabina Brevaglieri, Roma,15 aprile 2021.
Available on You Tube:  https://youtu.be/CsnaM1o6uFU.

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.

American contributions to Chinese education, medical care, business and the development of social institutions before the opening of World War II were substantial.  Engagement before the war contributed to the later shared victory.  China and the U.S. now cooperate on disease control (SARS, avian influenza, and prevention of birth defects), air traffic control and flight safety, Pacific fisheries, nuclear safety, transnational crime, the drug trade, and "brown" and "green" environmental issues.  "The best way to remember the past and to honor the dead is to build bridges of friendship and understanding between our nations."

Keys to the Kingdom: A History of the Pipe Organ in China is a music-historical study – a detailed account of the title’s organological subject running over four centuries. Beginning at the start of the China Roman Catholic mission around 1600, passing through the contentious Rites Controversy of the Eighteenth century, the explosive era of the Opium Wars and the high-water mark of mission activity  in the later Nineteenth century, to the destruction of all of China’s pipe organs by 1950, and the strange renaissance of pipe organ culture in the past twenty years, Prof. David Francis Urrows weaves musical narrative together with political history in an extended exercise in histoire croisée; an ‘entangled history’ in which the pipe organ is caught as both a musical instrument, a cultural and religious symbol,  and a technological marvel. Above all, this book is a meta-study made up of micro-historical records in Chinese, European, and North American archives and libraries, and represents over twenty-five years of research and field work pursued by The Pipe Organ in China Project.

Would my readers kindly note that there is no electronic copy of the book available, nor is there likely to be, so please do not request one. The cover image is for reference only. Thank you.

El mundo chino se expandió más allá de las fronteras imperiales gracias al desarrollo de un espacio portuario con dinámicas distintas a las provincias del interior del Imperio. Redes de comerciantes, migrantes, piratas, intereses imperiales e ideas, estuvieron en movimiento constante en todo el Sudeste Asiático y gran parte del mundo Pacífico. En Filipinas, esta situación permitió a los misioneros católicos españoles trabajar con chinos o sangleyes antes del ingreso a China. ¿Qué representó ello para la Misión China? ¿Cuáles dinámicas misionales se desarrollaron entre los chinos o sangleyes? ¿Se puede hablar de una Misión Sangley?

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.