Abstract
This chapter offers an account of the complex relationship between Zottoli and his mission, including also the heritage from the famous Jesuit missions starting from the late Ming dynasty. In addition, it also includes a comparative paragraph analyzing differences and similarities between Zottoli and another important “global” sinologist, James Legge (1815–1897), showing the importance of those figures in China and beyond. Finally, the chapter focuses on Zottoli’s hermeneutics showing the relevance of his cross-cultural works on theology, philosophy, and sinology, among other topics.
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Notes
- 1.
John: 12:24–25, NRSVCE.
- 2.
See Peter Jones, The 1848 Revolutions (London: Routledge, 2013), 89–107. For a general view of the 1848 riots in Europe, see Mike Rapport, 1848: Year of Revolution (London: Hachette, 2010); C. Edmund Maurice, The Revolutionary Movement of 1848–9 (New York: Haskell, 1969); Jonathan Sperber, The European Revolutions, 1848–1851 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
- 3.
Joseph Ratzinger, “In the beginning…”. A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Creation and Fall, translated by Boniface Ramsey (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), 13.
- 4.
Mary Evelin Tucker, “Religious Dimensions of Confucianism: Cosmology and Cultivation”, Philosophy East and West, vol. 48, no.1 (1998), 11.
- 5.
See Andrzej Maryniarczyk, “Philosophical Creationism: Thomas Aquinas’ Metaphysics of Creatio ex nihilo”, Studia Gilsoniana, vol. 5, no. 1 (2016), 217–268.
- 6.
Maryniarczyk, “Philosophical Creationism”, 245.
- 7.
For a completed account of the role of hermeneutics, especially in ethics and religious studies, see Hans Georg Gadamer, Hermeneutics, Religion and Ethics, edited and translated by Joel Weinsheimer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011).
- 8.
Paul Ricoeur, “Phenomenology and Hermeneutics”, Nous, vol. 9, no. 1 (1975), 96.
- 9.
For an account of Ricci’s ideas and biography, see Michela Fontana, Matteo Ricci: gesuita, scienziato, umanista in Cina (Matteo Ricci: a Jesuit, Scientist and Literatus in China) (Rome: De Luca, 2010); Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, Matteo Ricci and the Catholic Mission to China, 1583–1610: A Short History with Documents (Cambridge: Hackett, 2016); Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci 1552–1610 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
- 10.
For similarities and differences between Valignano’s and Ricci’s catechisms and evangelization methods, see Thierry Meynard, “The Overlooked Connection Between Ricci’s Tianzhu shiyi and Valignano’s Catechismus Japonensis”, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, vol. 40, no. 2 (2013), 303–322. For a general discussion concerning the debate concerning the name of God and other translation issues among the Jesuits in late Ming dynasty, key for the understanding of the hermeneutics adopted by them, see Sangkeun Kim, Strange Names of God: The Missionary Translation of the Divine Name and the Chinese Responses to Matteo Ricci’s “Shangti” in Late Ming China, 1583–1644 (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2004).
- 11.
A similar idea can be associated with the concept of intercultural hermeneutics, that is, the interpretative approach toward other cultures not as distant realities but as living elements of a concrete cultural environment. For a brief introduction to this idea refer to Seevaratham Wesley Ariarajah, Moving Beyond the Impasse: Reorienting Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2018), 113–126.
- 12.
For a general introduction to the concept of paideia in ancient Greece, see Kevin Robb, Literacy and Paideia in Ancient Greece (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994); Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1943–1945).
- 13.
Plato, Republic, edited and translated by Desmond Lee (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 487c–487d.
- 14.
Plato, Republic, 489c.
- 15.
The education of the philosophers, their paideia, has been discussed in Plato, Republic, 521c–541a.
- 16.
This term has been already adopted in the Great Learning (Da xue 大學), traditionally attributed to Confucius. “What is meant by saying that cultivation of the personal life (xiu shen 修身) depends on the rectification of the mind is that when one is affected by wrath to any extent, one’s mind will not be correct. When one is affected by fear to any extent, one’s mind will not be correct. When one is affected by fondness to any extent, one’s mind will not be correct. When the mind is not present, we look but we do not see, listen but do not hear, and eat but do not know the taste of the food. This is what is meant by saying that the cultivation of the personal life depends on the rectification of the mind”.
See Wing-Tsit Chan, A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 90.
- 17.
Barry C. Keenan, Neo-Confucian Self-cultivation (Manoa: University of Hawaii Press, 2011), 17.
- 18.
Keenan, Neo-Confucian Self-cultivation, 16. For a detailed account of the notion of self-cultivation in Zhu Xi and also the way it involves the notion of qi 氣, see Chan Lee, “Self-cultivation, Moral Cultivation and Moral Imagination: A Study of Zhu Xi’s Virtues Ethics”, Ph.D disseration, University of Hawaii, Manoa, 2008; Wu Qichao 吳啟超, Zhuzi de qiongli gongfulun 朱子的窮理工夫論 (Master Zhu’s Theory of Self-cultivation of Probing Principle) (Taipei: Guoli Taiwan daxue chuban zhongxin, 2017).
- 19.
Khiok-Khng Yeo, Musing with Confucius and Paul: Toward a Chinese Christian Theology, (Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2008).
- 20.
See also Khiok-Khng Yeo, What Has Jerusalem to Do with Beijing?: Biblical Interpretation from a Chinese Perspective (Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2018).
- 21.
Ennis B. Edmonds and Michelle A. Gonzalez, Caribbean Religious History: An Introduction (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 203–220.
- 22.
Edmonds and Gonzalez, Caribbean Religious History, 13.
- 23.
Lee Hsiang-Chieh, “Flexible Acculturation”, Social Thought and Research, vol. 29, (2008), 49–73.
- 24.
Lee, “Flexible Acculturation”, 67–68.
- 25.
Johnathan Lipman, Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China (London: University of Washington Press), 24–57.
- 26.
Kwok Wai Luen, “Theology of Religions and Intertextuality: A Case Study of Christian–Confucian and Islamic–Confucian Dialogue in the Early 20th-Century China”, in Christian Literature in Chinese Contexts edited by John T. P. Lai, (Basel: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute, 2019), 62.
- 27.
Kwok, “Theology of Religions and Intertextuality,” 66.
- 28.
All those transformative practices, as Nicolas Standaert suggests, are always in-between, and the sinologist, but also the philosopher who is engaging with two different traditions, finds themselves constantly in-between. So, the power of this transformation does not simply lie in the movements toward the others (or the other culture), but also in the moments of silence and reflection, in the instants where this transformation is not yet manifest. In those fractions, those encounters are even more vivid, and they appear as a constant motion toward a personal cultivation and the education of others.
For Sinology as an art of being in-between, refer to: Nicolas Standaert, “Don't Mind the Gap: Sinology as an Art of In‐Betweenness”, Philosophy Compass vol. 10, no. 2 (2015), 91–103.
- 29.
For a general introduction on Turner’s romanticism and his paintings, see Olivier Meslay, J.M.W. Turner: The Man Who Set Painting on Fire (London: Thames & Hudson, 2005).
- 30.
For an overview of the establishment of the Society of Jesus and its specific historical and religious context, see John W. O’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009); Michael A. Mullett, The Catholic Reformation (London: Routledge, 1999); The Formation of Clerical And Confessional Identities in Early Modern Europe, edited by Wim Janse and Barbara Pitkin (Boston: Brill 2006); The Jesuits II: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts, 1540–1773, edited by John W. O’Malley, S. J., Gauvin Alexander Bailey, Steven J. Harris, and T. Frank Kennedy, S. J. (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2005).
- 31.
Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works, edited by George E. Ganss S. J. (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), 11.
- 32.
Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works, 68.
- 33.
Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works, 73.
- 34.
Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works, 76–79.
- 35.
Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works, 80.
- 36.
See Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises and Selected Works, edited by George E. Ganss S. J. (New York: Paulist Press, 1991); Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, edited and translated by Louis Puhl (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2010). For a general guide to the text, see Charles J. Healey, The Ignatian Way: Key Aspects of Jesuit Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 2009). For the influence of the text in the Western tradition, see Javier Melloni, The Exercises of St Ignatius Loyola in the Western Tradition (Leominster: Gracewing, 2000).
- 37.
Ignatius of Loyola, The Spiritual Exercises, edited and translated by Louis Puhl (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2010), 33–34.
- 38.
This was also implemented through the publication of the Ratio atque Institutio Studiorum Societatis Iesu (General Plan of the Jesuit Education) in 1599. This represented a crucial element in the religious formation of the members of the Society of Jesus and it was the overall systematization of their education. For an overall view, see James A. O’ Donnell, “The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum”, Philippine Studies, vol. 32, no. 4 (1984), 462–475.
- 39.
Brian O’Leary, “Jesuit Spirituality Before and After the Suppression”, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, vol. 103, no. 412 (2014), 587.
- 40.
For an overview on the changes of the Society of Jesus before and after the suppression, see also The Jesuit Suppression in Global Context: Causes, Events, and Consequences, edited by Jeffrey D. Burson and Jonathan Wright (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).
- 41.
O’Leary, “Jesuit Spirituality Before and After the Suppression”, 594.
- 42.
The term in medieval times designated mainly a person that had been delegated by the scholasticus, that was a superintended for education, to teach various classes. See Aldo Scaglione, The Liberal Arts and the Jesuit College System, (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1986), 20. This terminology was kept by the Society of Jesus, yet in this specific context it designed an assistant for the teaching of pupils. This role was already systematized and explained in the early 1700’s by Joseph de Jouvancy, see Joseph de Jouvancy, Magistris scholarum inferiorum societatis Jesu de ratione discendi et docendi ex decreto congregat (Florence: apud Michaelem Nestenium, 1703).
- 43.
See David Grumett, Teilhard de Chardin: Theology, Humanity, and Cosmos (Leuven: Peeters, 2005); James A. Lyons, The Cosmic Christ in Origen and Teilhard de Chardin: A Comparative Study (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982); Arthur Abel, “Cosmic Genesis: Teilhard de Chardin and the Emerging Scientific Paradigm”, Teilhard Studies, vol. 5, (1981), 1–26.
- 44.
Anthony Clark, “Forward”, China’s Last Jesuit Charles J. McCarthy and the End of the Mission in Catholic Shanghai, edited by Amanda Clark (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), ix.
- 45.
For a documented analysis of the mission see Hsin-fang Wu, “The Transmission of Memories: Reprints, Historical Studies, and Commemoration in the Jesuit Shanghai Mission, 1842–1949”, Ph.D disseration, Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, 2017, 17–22.
- 46.
For a focus on Xu Guangqi’s religious relevance and his religious works, see Wang Xiaochao, Christianity and Imperial Culture: Chinese Christian Apologetics in the Seventeenth Century and Their Latin Patristic Equivalent (Boston: Brill, 1998), 99–104 (biography); 107–140 (Xu Guangqi’s religious works).
- 47.
See Gail King, “Candida Xu and the Growth of Christianity in China in the Seventeenth Century”, Monumenta Serica, vol. 46, no. 1 (1998), 49–66. For a more general understanding of the role of Chinese female converts in the given period, see also Nadine Amsler, Jesuits and Matriarchs: Domestic Worship in Early Modern China (Washington: University of Washington Press, 2018).
- 48.
This was also the case for Protestant missionaries, as explained by Gregory Blue. See Gregory Blue, “Xu Guangqi in the West: Early Jesuit Sources and the Construction of an Identity” in Statecraft and Intellectual Renewal in Late Ming China: The Cross-Cultural Synthesis of Xu Guangqi (1562–1633), edited by Catherine Jami, Peter Mark Engelfriet and Gregory Blue (Boston: Brill, 2001), 54–58.
- 49.
See Wu Hsin-fang, “Commemorating Xu Guangqi in 19th- and 20th-Century Shanghai,” Monumenta Serica, vol. 66, no. 2 (2018), 437–464.
- 50.
Moreover, as suggested by Nadine Amsler, the female religious community of Zi-ka-wei played a major role in the enrootment of Christianity in that specific area. See Nadine Amsler, Jesuits and Matriarchs: Domestic Worship in Early Modern China (Washington: University of Washington Press, 2018), 115–127.
- 51.
Agustín Udías, Jesuit Contribution to Science: A History (Boston: Springer, 2014), 144–145.
- 52.
Bortone, Lotte e trionfi in Cina, 122.
- 53.
Bortone, Lotte e trionfi in Cina, 112–113.
- 54.
For a detailed narration of the history of this church, See Olga Merekina, “The Old Catholic Church in Shanghai: A 350-year-old Treasure”, Ming Qing Studies (2013), 275–284.
- 55.
See Merekina, “The Old Catholic Church in Shanghai”, 277–278; Bortone, Lotte e trionfi in Cina, 301.
- 56.
See Merekina, “The Old Catholic Church in Shanghai”, 278.
- 57.
For a comprehensive analysis of the church, see Stefano Piastra, “Francesco Brancati, Martino Martini and Shanghai’s Lao Tang (Old Church): Mapping, Perception and Cultural Implications of a Place”, Martino Martini, Man of Dialogue, edited by Luisa M. Paternicò, Claudia von Collan and Riccardo Scartezzini (Trento: Università degli Studi di Trento, 2016), 159–181.
- 58.
The complex hermeneutical approach adopted by Ricci had been largely debated by the recent scholarship. Given the narrow scope of this monograph, it will not be possible to discuss it in detail. For a general overview of Ricci’s position, see Chen Hong, “On Matteo Ricci’s Interpretations of Chinese Culture”, Coolabah, no. 16 (2015), 87–100; John D. Young, Confucianism and Christianity: The First Encounter (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1983), 25–40; Yu Liu, “Adapting Catholicism to Confucianism: Matteo Ricci’s Tianzhu Shiyi,” The European Legacy, vol. 19, no. 1 (2014), 43–59.
- 59.
Yu Liu, “The Dubious Choice of an Enemy: The Unprovoked Animosity of Matteo Ricci against Buddhism”, The European Legacy, vol. 20, no. 3 (2015), 231.
- 60.
This had been, once again, covered by Yu Liu, see Yu Liu, Harmonious Disagreement: Matteo Ricci and His Closest Chinese Friends (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2015). Moreover, the reactions to Matteo Ricci’s hermeneutic effort had been discussed by Gaetano Ricciardolo. See Gaetano Ricciardolo, “Gli scritti pro e contro i missionari gesuiti negli ambienti colti cinesi della tarda epoca Ming e dell'epoca Qing in imperial China” (“The writings in favor and against Jesuit missionaries in the Chinese erudite settings from the late Ming dynasty and the Qing dynasty in China”) Rivista degli studi orientali, vol. 74, no. 1/4 (2000), 141–158. For a more in-depth analysis of those reactions, see Jacques Gernet, China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
- 61.
Young, Confucianism and Christianity, 38.
- 62.
See David E. Mungello, Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology (Manoah: University of Hawaii Press, 1988), 62–68.
- 63.
See Paulos Huang, Confronting Confucian Understandings of the Christian Doctrine of Salvation: A Systematic Theological Analysis of the Basic Problems in the Confucian-Christian Dialogue (Boston: Brill, 2009), 175.
- 64.
See Young, Confucianism, and Christianity, 39.
- 65.
See David E Mungello, “The Reconciliation of Neo-Confucianism with Christianity in the Writings of Joseph De Prémare, S. J.”, Philosophy East and West, vol. 26, no. 4 (1976), 389–410. For an in-depth analysis of Prémare’s main ideas, see Knud Lundbæk, Joseph de Prémare, 1666–1736, S.J.: Chinese Philology and Figurism (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1991).
- 66.
For a general overview on the Figurists, see Arnold H. Rowbotham, “The Jesuit Figurists and Eighteenth-Century Religious Thought”, Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 17, no. 4 (1956), 471–485; Giuliano Mori, “Natural Theology and Ancient Theology in the Jesuit China Mission”, Intellectual History Review (2019), 1–22. For a comprehensive account of the Figurists’ interpretation of the Book of Changes, that will be briefly mentioned also later on in the book, see Ling-chia Sophie Wei, Chinese Theology and Translation: The Christianity of the Jesuit Figurists and Their Christianized Yijing (London: Routledge, 2019); Ling-chia Sophie Wei, “Jesuit Figurists’ Written Space: Figurist Imitation of Chinese Literati in Their Re-interpretation of The Book of Changes”, Translation Spaces, vol. 5, no. 2 (2016), 271–287; Claudia Von Collani, “The First Encounter of the West with the Yijing. Introduction to and Edition of Letters and Latin Translations by French Jesuits from the 18th Century”, Monumenta Serica, vol. 55, (2007), 227–387.
- 67.
Mungello, “The Reconciliation of Neo-Confucianism with Christianity in the Writings of Joseph De Prémare, S. J.”, 391.
- 68.
Mungello, “The Reconciliation of Neo-Confucianism with Christianity in the Writings of Joseph De Prémare, S. J.”, 391.
- 69.
Mori, “Natural Theology and Ancient Theology in the Jesuit China Mission”, 11.
- 70.
See Jocelyn M. N. Marinescu, “Defending Christianity in China: The Jesuit Defense of Christianity in the Lettres édifiantes et curieuses and Ruijianlu in Relation to the Yongzheng Proscription of 1724”, Ph.D disseration, Kansas State University, Manhattan, United States of America, 2008, 25.
- 71.
Mungello, “The Reconciliation of Neo-Confucianism with Christianity in the Writings of Joseph De Prémare, S. J.”, 393–395.
- 72.
For a more in-depth analysis of the letter, refer to David E. Mungello, The Silencing of Jesuit Figurist Joseph de Prémare in Eighteenth-Century China (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), 92–98.
- 73.
Mungello, “The Reconciliation of Neo-Confucianism with Christianity in the Writings of Joseph De Prémare, S. J.”, 396.
- 74.
Mungello, “The Reconciliation of Neo-Confucianism with Christianity in the Writings of Joseph De Prémare, S. J.”, 397–398.
- 75.
Mungello, “The Reconciliation of Neo-Confucianism with Christianity in the Writings of Joseph De Prémare, S. J.”, 398.
- 76.
Mungello, “The Reconciliation of Neo-Confucianism with Christianity in the Writings of Joseph De Prémare, S. J.”, 398–399.
- 77.
Mungello, The Silencing of Jesuit Figurist Joseph de Prémare in Eighteenth-Century China, 91–92; Mungello, “The Reconciliation of Neo-Confucianism with Christianity in the Writings of Joseph De Prémare, S. J.”, 399–400.
- 78.
Prémare’s interpretation of Zhu Xi’s cosmology is actually more nuanced, as shown by Mungello. Premare, in fact, does not entirely criticize the ideas of Zhu Xi but he believes that they should be reconsidered by another angle. In fact, “Premare believes that the difficulty may be resolved by recognizing that Chu Hsi used the term t'ai-chi in two different senses. In the first sense, t'ai-chi is equivalent to tao or “eternal Reason” which, Premare notes, Chou Tun-i referred to as wu-chi. In the second sense, t'ai-chi represents the idea, property, or reason of a given thing. Premare connects this second sense of t'ai-chi with the Chinese term tsean (pattern, rule, standard) and tang- jan (what should be).” See Mungello, “The Reconciliation of Neo-Confucianism with Christianity in the Writings of Joseph De Prémare, S. J.”, 403. Those issues had been further discussed by Prémare in his Chinese works, especially the Taiji Lüe Shuo 太極略說 (The Rough Explanation of the Taiji). See Sophie Ling-chia Wei, “Sheng Ren in the Figurists’ Reinterpretation of the Yijing”, Religions, vol. 10, (2019), 35–44.
- 79.
For an overall analysis of Legge’s works and his biography, see Lauren F. Pfister, Striving for ‘The Whole Duty of Man’: James Legge and the Scottish Protestant Encounter with China (Germersheim: The Scottish Studies Centre of the Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, 2004), 2 vols. See also Norman J. Girardot, The Victorian Translation of China: James Legge’s Oriental Pilgrimage (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002).
- 80.
See James Legge, The Chinese Classics: with a Translation, Critical and Exegetical Notes, Prolegomena, and Copious Indexes (London: Trubner, 1861–1872).
- 81.
Girardot, The Victorian Translation of China, 13.
- 82.
Walter Henry Medhurst, A Dissertation on the Theology of the Chinese: With a View to the Elucidation of the Most Appropriate Term for Expressing the Diety in the Chinese Language (Shanghai: Mission Press, 1847).
- 83.
See James Legge, The Notions of the Chinese Concerning God and Spirits, with an Examination of the “Defense of an Essay on the Proper Rendering of the Words Elohim and Theos, into the Chinese Language, by William J. Boone,…” (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Register Office, 1852).
- 84.
See Legge, The Notions of the Chinese concerning God and Spirits, 7–64.
- 85.
Lauren F. Pfister, “The Legacy of James Legge”, International Bulletin of Missionary Research, vol. 22, no. 2 (1998), 78.
- 86.
Pfister, “The Legacy of James Legge”, 78.
- 87.
Pfister, “The Legacy of James Legge”, 80.
- 88.
Pfister, “The Legacy of James Legge”, 77.
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De Caro, A. (2022). The Labyrinth of Zi-Ka-Wei. In: Angelo Zottoli, a Jesuit Missionary in China (1848 to 1902). Christianity in Modern China. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5297-4_2
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