Authors: Michela Fontana
Despite the Jesuits’ optimism regarding the possible benefits to be gained from a trip to Beijing, the idea was soon abandoned because Wang Pan considered it very dangerous, feeling sure that a journey by foreign missionaries inside the empire, and especially one bound for the capital, could trigger unforeseeable reactions on the part of the authorities. Though advised to be prudent and not to move away from Zhaoqing, Ruggieri attempted to found a new mission in the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang, south of Shanghai, where he traveled with Antonio de Almeida. Realizing the impossibility of carrying out his plans, Ruggieri returned to Zhaoqing while Almeida continued to Macao, where he stayed for a few months. The two missionaries’ fruitless attempt to penetrate another province was, however, a cause of great concern for Wang Pan, who began to fear that his friendship with the foreigners might have negative repercussions on his career.
Superstitions, Wondrous Potions, and False Accusations:
Wang Pan’s Volte-face and Ruggieri’s Departure
Time passed. It was now 1587, and the missionaries devoted themselves zealously to their small community of 37 converts. Ricci continued to study written Chinese with a new tutor and made great strides in his understanding of classical works. Meanwhile, in order to take advantage of his skills and to help the new missionaries in the study of Mandarin, he, together with Ruggieri, compiled a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary, the first ever from a European language into Mandarin. The manuscript, a document of great historical interest, is still preserved in the Roman archives of the Society of Jesus.
News of the Jesuits’ presence had spread, and the circulation of Ricci’s map of the world made them known throughout the Guangdong province. Driven by curiosity to meet Li Madou, mandarins visiting Zhaoqing to confer with the governor seized the opportunity to call at the missionaries’ residence and examine the clocks, prisms, books, and paintings. Ricci was able to establish good relations with
shidafu
and
guan
thanks to his mastery of Chinese, his capacity for learned conversation, and his knowledge of the local rules of conduct, as well as his personal gifts of affability, modesty, and discretion, which were well suited to the Confucian mentality.
Every so often, however, someone would come knocking at the doors of the mission in the belief that the Jesuits were wizards and practiced alchemy, the complex interweaving of philosophical doctrines, magic, and investigations of nature aimed at discovering the secrets of life and the principles making it possible to transmute base metals into gold and silver. A discipline of ancient origin also practiced in Europe, alchemy was an authentic and widespread obsession in China. Many believed that it was possible to transform the red mineral cinnabar (mercuric sulfide) into silver by means of amber, which had only been known in China for a few decades and was considered a precious material with magical properties. The Chinese were convinced that the Portuguese possessed huge amounts of amber and used it to produce silver, finding no other explanation for the fact that merchants bought vast quantities of cinnabar in China, transported it to India and Japan, and returned from those countries with their ships loaded with silver.
The same suspicion extended to the Jesuits, who never seemed to want for silver and had no need to ask for alms like the other monks. While many Chinese alchemists concentrated on the transmutation of base metals, others were obsessed with the search for an elixir of eternal youth, an illusory goal pursued also by practicing the physical and respiratory exercises suggested by various monks. One of the most sought after ingredients for the potion of immortality was the yellowish residue derived from the process of separating cinnabar into its components—mercury and sulfur—which was erroneously held to be pure gold. Two self-styled wizards called on the missionaries one day claiming to have used this and to be over two hundred years old, despite their youthful appearance. Many believed Ricci to be an alchemist with secret formulas in his keeping and begged him constantly to reveal them. The more strenuously the irritated Jesuit denied any knowledge of transmutation, the more convinced they were to the contrary.
Ricci deeply disapproved of the passion for alchemy and of the practice of geomancy or
feng shui
, literally “wind-water,” the typically Chinese art of interpreting the characteristics of a place to see whether it was suitable for the erection of a building. Nobody in China, starting from the emperor, constructed or ordered the construction of any edifice whatsoever without consulting a geomancer, as it was believed that a mistake in the positioning of the entrance and rooms, or in the location of the structure with respect to surrounding elements such as hills, rivers, and lakes, could unleash negative energies that would bring perennial misfortune upon whoever lived there. The Chinese also consulted geomancers in order to decide where to place their tombs, one of the decisions with the most influence on family fortunes. Ricci was irritated by talk of more or less magical beliefs, spells and curses, horoscopes, and various forms of divination offered by those he referred to with contempt as “astrologers, geomancers, augurs, fortunetellers, and frauds.”
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Whenever he had the opportunity, he tried to convince his Chinese friends of the fallacious nature of all forms of the superstition. Many consulted fortune-tellers and were so influenced that, as Ricci observed to his horror, they ended up really falling ill if an illness was predicted. Others saw sorcery behind every innocent action. When Ricci officiated at his first baptism, converting an old man on his deathbed, some neighbors spread the rumor that the Jesuit’s real intention was to steal a gem that the peasant kept hidden in the back of his head, a claim that echoed the custom of setting precious stones in that part of statues of Buddha.
Wang Pan was also superstitious and had begun to think that his friendliness toward the Jesuits was a source of misfortune, as the promotion he had awaited for three years, which would involve a higher rank and his transfer to another province, was late in arriving. Regardless of superstition, the mandarin was also well aware of how easy it was for a bureaucrat to fall into disgrace and began to fear that the hospitality he had granted to the foreigners had provided his enemies with dangerous ammunition and had shown him in a bad light to his superiors. As time passed, Wang Pan’s benevolence toward the Jesuits turned into hostility, and the
guan
even demanded to have his name erased from the plaques he had given them and from the matrix on which Ricci’s map of the world was engraved. He soon dispensed the missionaries from the obligation of paying homage to him on ritual occasions, and finally he ordered them to leave the city in November 1587.
De Sande, who had never obtained an official permit to reside in Zhao-
qing, returned to Macao immediately, but Ricci was ready to fight in order to remain with Ruggieri. The Jesuit drew up a memorial defending the missionaries and went to present it in person to Wang Pan, asking him not to send them back to Macao and above all not to have them expelled from China, as they would never survive the long voyage back to Europe.
11
Apparently moved to compassion, the prefect granted Ricci permission to remain in the city and issued a new edict in favor of the missionaries, whose position, however, remained precarious. The rumor that the building of the tower was financed by the Portuguese continued to circulate, and further episodes threw discredit on the Jesuits.
A young Chinese convert christened Martin who lived in Canton visited the missionaries in Zhaoqing and stole the prism from their house with the intention of selling it. He also boasted that they had taught him the secrets of alchemy, thus confirming the suspicions that they were wizards and cast evil spells. Not content with the serious damage already done by his words, he went so far as to accuse Ruggieri of having an adulterous relationship with a married woman. The Jesuit was acquitted of these ignominious and groundless accusations, and Martin, finally found guilty of theft and slander, was imprisoned and beaten so severely that he died in his cell. The restored atmosphere of peace was to be short lived. Wang Pan finally obtained his longed-for promotion and was assigned to the administrative offices of the central Huguang province, part of the present-day provinces of Hunan and Hubei. His now inevitable departure would deprive the Jesuits of the support that had never been wanting in time of need.
In order to honor the mandarin, who had governed the town with wisdom and rectitude, the inhabitants of Zhaoqing erected a pagoda with his statue and the traditional brazier for burning incense. In accordance with custom, they presented the official with a pair of boots and placed the old ones in a receptacle in the middle of the pagoda beneath an inscription listing the meritorious actions performed in the city by the former prefect. Once the celebrations were over, Wang Pan left Zhaoqing and disappeared from the missionaries’ lives forever.
Ruggieri spent some time in Macao waiting to see Valignano on his way through from Japan, and De Sande returned to Zhaoqing in his place. The times had changed, however, and the new prefect’s pronouncements in favor of the missionaries’ continued presence in the city were now no longer enough to prevent new episodes of intolerance. The most serious took place when the river was in full spate due to excessive rain. The population feared a repetition of the flooding that had struck the countryside the previous year, causing the deaths of dozens of people, the loss of thousands of acres of cultivated land, and the destruction of hundreds of homes. Built of masonry on two stories, the Jesuits’ house was the only one to survive unscathed, while nearly all of those living close to the river had lost most of their belongings.
Thrown into a state of panic by the rising waters of the river, the peasants began to cut down trees and bushes and to collect all kinds of materials to build makeshift protective barriers in front of their houses. A group of peasants entered the Jesuits’ residence on the pretext of looking for material in the courtyard and attacked the building, breaking down its doors and windows. Ricci kept a cool head, met the attackers face to face, offered them wood, and told them to take whatever they wanted as long as they did not destroy the house. His prompt action nipped the violence in the bud.
De Sande chose to return to Macao again, and Ricci, afraid to think what might happen in the event of another similar episode, asked the prefect to issue yet another edict forbidding acts of violence against the Jesuits. By now, however, the missionaries were wondering how long the authorities would be able to defend them from the growing hostility of the local population. News of the serious problems regarding the safety of the mission in Zhaoqing reached Valignano, who thought it essential to request the protection of the country’s highest authority, namely the emperor. The only way the Visitor could see of doing this was by organizing a papal embassy to request the Son of Heaven to grant the Jesuits permission to live in China and preach the Christian doctrine freely. To this end, he instructed Michele Ruggieri to leave China as soon as possible and to provide the king of Spain and the pope with firsthand testimony of the difficulties encountered in missionary work in the Middle Kingdom, highlighting the potential benefits to be obtained from converting that immense empire and asking that an embassy be dispatched. Ricci was instead to prepare the terrain by applying to the authorities for permits and providing the requisite documentation.
Ricci’s account of his companion’s sudden departure—“Because Father Ruggero [
sic
] was already old and unable to learn the Chinese language, [Valignano] took advantage of this opportunity to send him to Europe”
12
—seems to suggest that the organization of the journey was a pretext to remove Ruggieri, who could hardly be considered old at the age of forty-five, from China. Some historians have indeed suggested that the decision to send the Jesuit back to Europe was not due to his known difficulty in learning Chinese but rather to his failure to see eye to eye with the Visitor on how the Gospel was to be spread.
13
Whatever the real reasons may have been, Ruggieri certainly derived no luster from comparison with the charismatic personality of his young companion from Macerata, with whom Valignano had established a perfect understanding.
Michele Ruggieri left Macao at the end of November 1588 after five years of life in Zhaoqing with Ricci. He set sail with a consignment of gifts for the pope and the king of Spain, including a screen decorated with a painted map of China. The ship taking him to Europe was wrecked in the Azores, and the gifts were lost, but Ruggieri succeeded in reaching Spain and obtained a promise of assistance in dispatching a papal embassy to China from Philip II. The Jesuit then arrived in Rome but was prevented from obtaining an audience by the deaths of four popes shortly after they succeeded to the throne of Saint Peter, Sixtus V and Urban VII in 1590 and Gregory XIV and Innocent IX the following year. These unforeseeable events made all discussion of the Chinese question impossible and forced the Jesuit authorities to abandon their plans. Ruggieri was then sent to Salerno, where he died at the age of sixty-four. Ricci spent a few months on his own in Zhaoqing before finally being joined by the young Antonio de Almeida.
Expulsion from Zhaoqing
The missionaries’ position became increasingly awkward. At the end of 1588, on completion of the fifth year of their stay in Zhaoqing, some retired mandarins resident in Canton presented a report attacking the Jesuits to the censor of Guangdong. In China, where age was honored and experience respected, it was not unusual for groups of authoritative elders to make suggestions on important issues in social life, which were taken very seriously by the authorities.
The document expressed Chinese fears with regard to the Westerners and the possibility that the Portuguese might be seeking to conquer the whole of China after their progressive colonization of Macao. The “foreigners from strange kingdoms”
14
were described as spies determined to discover the secrets of the empire, enemies ready “to scatter our people in the sea like fish and whales,” and “thorns and nettles” that had planted their roots in the good Chinese earth. If the settlement in Macao was the manifestation of a disease threatening the empire at its borders, the presence of the Jesuits in Zhaoqing was a plague in the heart of the country. The elderly officials called for the missionaries to be rooted out as soon as possible and for all foreigners to be expelled from China.