Abstract
The chapter describes, first, how the Chinese Empire was introduced into the European cultural world and understood by Catholic intellectuals, carried out by several writers and especially through the Jesuit positive interpretation of China during the sixteenth–eighteenth centuries. And then, it points out the shift in the evaluation during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when the emphasis was on China’s negative image of poverty, disorder and oppression.
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Notes
- 1.
Hirth/Rockhill: Chau Ju-kua « Bibliotheca Sinica 2.0 (univie.ac.at).
- 2.
C.R. Boxer, South China in the 16th Century (Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint Ltd, 1967), pp. lxi, xc, xci.
- 3.
Francesco D’Arelli (ed.), Matteo Ricci, Lettere (1580–1609) (Macerata, Quodlibet, 2001), p. 84. The letter is dated 13 September 1584. However, scholars doubt about the authorship (see below).
- 4.
Relación del grande Reyno de la China, y de sus calidades, embiada por el Pe Alexandro Valiñano, Visitador de Japón y de la India, de la Compañía de Jesús, en el año de 1584.
- 5.
The original Diary of Fr. Ricci, however, will be published by Pasquale D’Elia only in the 1940s, Fonti Ricciane (v.1 Rome 1942, vv. 2 and 3, Rome 1949).
- 6.
Its full title is China monumentis, qua sacris qua profanis, nec non variis naturae & artis spectaculis, aliarumque rerum memorabilium argumentis illustrate.
- 7.
Theodore Nicholas Foss, “Chinese Chronology in J.B. Du Halde, Description… de la Chine”, in Actes du IV° Colloque International du Sinologie (Chantilly 1983, Varieté Sinologiques, Nouvelle Serie, No. 73, p. 164).
- 8.
Unfortunately, for many scholars (Communist authorities included), Confucianism is still considered juts a political philosophy and not a Religion. But after the publication of books by Wing-Tsit Chen, H. Fingarette, P. A. Rule, Tu Wei-Ming, J. Berthrong, and especially of C.K. Yang (Religion in Chinese Society) this position is untenable (For more details, see S. Ticozzi, Religioni Cinesi, La Tradizione Confuciana [Sette e Religioni. Monograph No. 28, 4/2001]).
- 9.
Ashley E. Millar, “The Jesuits as Knowledge Brokers Between Europe and China (1582–1773): Shaping European Views of the Middle Kingdom”. http://www.lse.ac.uk/Economic-History/Assets/Documents/WorkingPapers/Economic-History/2007/WP105.pdf.
- 10.
Chen Hong, “On Matteo Ricci’s Interpretation of Chinese Culture,” in Coolabah, No. 16, 2015, ISSN 1988–5946, Observatory: Centre d’Etudes Australians/Australian Studies Centre, Universitat de Barcelona.
- 11.
El padre Mateo Rizzi, que es uno de los dichos dos religiosos me a enviado una relación muy breve y açertad de las cosas de la China y de sus antiguedades y descriptió, la qual envio con las cartas dirigidas assi mesmo al virrey de la Nueva España para que las encamine a Vuestra Magestad.
- 12.
C.R. Boxer, o.c., p. lxxxvii.
- 13.
José Antonio Cervera Jimenes, “El Shilu del dominico Juan Cobo (1593)”, in Revista Estudios, 32, I-2016. https://noticias.nat.gov.tw/news.php?post=91596&unit=99,108,115&unitname=Taiwan-Hoy&postname=JUAN-COBO-NUESTRO-PIONERO-INTERCULTURAL.
- 14.
Bernard, R.P. Henri, translated into Chinese by Guan Zhenhu, Critical Biography of Matteo Ricci (Beijing: The Commercial Press, 1993), p. 162.
- 15.
Chen Hong, “On Matteo Ricci’s Interpretation of Chinese Culture,” a.c.
- 16.
P. D’Elia, Fonti Ricciane, vol. II (Rome, 1949), p. 33.
- 17.
- 18.
In Jesuits Missionaries in China and Tibet (Vol. 50, No. 4, May 2011).
- 19.
M. Barreto, Fathers in Goa, 23 November 1555, from Macau (http://www.upf.edu/asia/projectes/che/che16.htm).
- 20.
Immanuel C.Y. Hsu, The Rise of Modern China, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 177.
- 21.
Wolfgang Franke, China and the West (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1967), pp. 64, 143.
- 22.
Letter of Fr. Cicalese from Tianjiajing, dated August 20, 1877, published in Le Missioni Cattoliche (L.M.C.), 1877.
- 23.
Volonteri > Propaganda Fide (letter without date), SCPF Archives, China 1882, vol. 25, sheet 234.
- 24.
Chinese Recorder 1913, pp. 613–614.
- 25.
R. Dawson, The Chinese Chameleon—An Analysis of European Conceptions of Chinese Civilization (London, 1967), pp. 132–134.
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Ticozzi, S. (2023). The Chinese Empire, Seen Through Catholic Eyes. In: CHINA and the Catholic Church. Christianity in Modern China. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3173-6_1
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