Matteo Ricci (21 page)

The Chinese saw the bond between the heavens and the earth as mediated by the Son of Heaven, whose task it was to ensure harmony between the two worlds in accordance with the Tao. The emperor was considered the link upon which earthly order depended and was compared to the pole star, the fulcrum around which the heavenly vault seemed to revolve.

The emperor celebrated the imperial rites dedicated to the heavens
30
and was responsible for presenting to his subjects the calendar drawn up by the court astronomers and made public during one of the most splendid ceremonies of the year. This “Book of the Laws of Time” showed the division of the year into twelve or thirteen lunar months and twenty-four solar periods, and it supplied the dates of the major festivities, the most important of which was the New Year, falling on the first day of the first lunar month and followed a fortnight later by the Feast of Lanterns. The moon was celebrated in midautumn and the ancestors in the third lunar month. The calendar also supplied the most important astronomical data, such as the positions of the sun, the moon, and the five known planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) in the various periods of the year and the dates and duration of solar and lunar eclipses. An integral part of the publication was the astrological almanac listing auspicious and inauspicious dates.

With its wealth of social, religious, and political implications, the “Book of the Laws of Time” was the most important imperial document, and its compilation was considered so crucial to the state that the production of any other calendar was punishable by death. No one was allowed to perform astronomical calculations or possess books of astronomy without government authorization.

The importance attributed to the astronomers’ task of predicting and classifying celestial phenomena was such that the occurrence of an inexplicable event such as a comet or a supernova in the heavens, or a natural disaster like an earthquake or a flood on the earth, was interpreted as a sign that the Son of Heaven had failed to perform his duties correctly. This was the reason for the painstaking precision of the observations carried out over the centuries by Chinese astronomers, who were required to record, or rather predict, every phenomenon departing from the normal run of events. When Wanli took the throne, the supernova that exploded at the end of 1572—the same dying star that Clavius observed from the terrace of the Roman College—was still visible in the sky. Slowly diminishing in intensity and to disappear the following year, this celestial phenomenon was a cause of great apprehension to the Chinese astronomers. The chronicles tell us that the grand secretary Zhang Juzheng, tutor to the child emperor, urged Wanli to examine his conduct so as to avoid any further disruption of the heavenly balance.
31

When an evident mistake was made in the astronomical calculations, the emperor punished those responsible and sometimes ordered the imperial mathematicians to rewrite the calendar. Discrepancies were very frequent in the Ming era because the astronomical tables in use were archaic and inaccurate, and because the general framework of the old
Datong
calendar was now out of date. Particularly severe punishments were visited on those who failed to predict solar eclipses, as accuracy in this was believed to be the only way of neutralizing their ill effects. Fear of making mistakes had made the imperial astronomers highly skilled in excogitating imaginative excuses for their ignorance and in devising stratagems to safeguard their reputation. One expedient frequently used was to announce a larger number of solar eclipses than actually expected
32
and then to claim credit for averting them by means of propitiatory rites when they failed to occur, with no fear of being found out.

Celestial observations and calculations were performed by the office of astronomical observations, a complex bureaucratic structure employing hundreds of officials of every degree and level. A document dating from the end of the first millennium indicates a workforce of 500: 63 responsible for drawing up the calendar, 147 for astronomical observations, 90 for the measurement of time, and 200 for sounding the hours with bells and drums. There were at least twice as many in Ricci’s time. Moreover, two different astronomical observatories had been operating in Beijing ever since the Song era, one manned by Chinese astronomers inside the walls of the imperial palace and the other manned by Muslims outside. The personnel of both institutions were required to develop predictions of celestial phenomena and then to compare their results. History tells us that the officials in charge were punished by the emperor in 1070, when the censors established that for years the two groups of astronomers had confined themselves to copying one another’s results without bothering to make any independent calculations.
33
As Ricci realized on checking the predictions of the Chinese calendar, the imperial astronomers of the Ming era had evidently made little progress in terms of accuracy and diligence.

Now having a clearer idea of how important astronomy was to the empire and having ascertained that the literati were very interested in acquiring his skills, Ricci decided that if he stayed in Nanchang long enough, he would teach mathematics and astronomy more systematically than he had in the past. He was in fact convinced that science would prove the best way to establish credibility with the dignitaries and would thus facilitate the work of spreading the Christian doctrine. At the same time, however, he was aware that he was neither a mathematician nor an astronomer and that he lacked the books he needed to take on tasks as demanding as that of assisting the astronomers in revising the calendar, a possibility suggested by Minister Wang in Shaozhou. Realizing that he would need the help of a team of specialists if anything was ever to come of this, Ricci began to bombard the Jesuit authorities with requests to send out brethren skilled in astronomy to assist him in his plans to convert the Chinese, a project that placed science at the service of religion.

Notes

1. Letter dated August 29, 1595; OS II, p. 148.

2. Letter dated October 7, 1595; OS II, p. 163.

3. Letter dated August 29, 1595; OS II, p. 151.

4. FR, book I, ch. III, p. 15.

5. Letter to Duarte de Sande, August 29, 1595; OS II, p. 157. Cf. also Jacques Gernet,
Chine et christianisme, action et réaction
(Paris: Gallimard, 1982), p. 225.

6. On the misunderstandings and incomprehension between the Jesuits and the Chinese seen from the latter’s standpoint, see Jacques Gernet,
Chine et christianisme
, cit., pp. 191 ff.

7. Letter to Duarte de Sande, August 29, 1595; OS II, pp. 160–61.

8. Cf. Pasquale M. D’Elia, “Il trattato sull’amicizia: primo libro scritto in cinese da Matteo Ricci S.I., traduzione antica (Ricci) e moderna (D’Elia),” in
Studia Missionaria
7 (1952): pp. 449–515.

9. The quotations are taken from Pasquale M. D’Elia, “Il trattato sull’amicizia: primo libro scritto in cinese da Matteo Ricci S.I., traduzione antica (Ricci) e moderna (D’Elia),” in
Studia Missionaria
7 (1952): cit.

10. According to D’Elia, Ricci followed the Buddhist practice of making phonetic Chinese transcriptions of prayers in Sanskrit. See FR, book III, ch. XII, p. 369, no. 1.

11. Ricci sent a copy of his work to Rome on August 14, 1599 (FR, book III, ch. XII, pp. 368–69, no. 1).

12. Letter dated August 15, 1606; OS II, p. 304.

13. Letter to Girolamo Costa, October 15, 1596; ibid., p. 230. João da Rocha was sent to Shaozhou first for a short period and then Nicolò Longobardo, who stayed with Lazzaro Cattaneo (FR, book III, ch. XIV, p. 385).

14. OS II, p. 184. See also FR, book III, ch. XI, p. 360.

15. Cf. Frances A. Yates,
The Art of Memory
(London: Pimlico, 1992), esp. chapter 1, and J. Spence,
The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci
, cit., pp. 2–5.

16. Cicero’s work contains the first written exposition of the method. See Steven Rose,
The Making of Memory: From Molecules to Mind
[trad. it.
La fabbrica della memoria
, Milano, Garzanti, 1994, p. 84].

17. See J. Spence,
The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci
, cit., for a detailed description.

18. See J. Needham, op. cit., pp. 211 ff, for a description of the Chinese astronomical system.

19. See chapter 10 (“The Forgotten Astronomical Observatory”).

20. As the position of the sun and its height above the horizon—and hence the length and direction of the shadow cast by the gnomon—vary with movement north or south along a meridian, every solar clock has to be calibrated for the latitude of the locality in which it is used.

21. Ricci thanked Clavius in a letter written in Nanchang on Christmas Day 1597, which is the only letter addressed to the professor to have survived (OS II, p. 241).

22. OS II, p. 166.

23. OS II, p. 207.

24. Kepler was to complete the theoretical and mathematical framework of the Copernican system by formulating the laws that govern the movement of the planets around the earth on elliptical orbits.

25. Ricci knew that the visibility of a solar eclipse and its degree depended on the part of the earth from which it was observed, and he had no difficulty predicting the duration of the phenomenon by taking into account the latitude of Nanchang.

26. Letter dated November 4, 1595; OS II, p. 207.

27. Letter dated October 28, 1595; OS II, p. 184.

28. See I. Iannaccone,
Misurare il cielo: l’antica astronomia cinese
, cit., pp. 16 ff.

29. Galileo spoke of this in his
Istoria e dimostrazioni intorno alle macchie solari
, printed by the Accademia dei Lincei in 1613. Attention should also be drawn to the dispute between Galileo and Father Christoph Scheiner over the paternity of the discovery of sunspots; see Ludovico Geymonat,
Galileo
(Turin: Einaudi, 1969), pp. 71 ff.

30. See chapter 4 (“Religion in China: Heaven, the Gods, and the Name of God”).

31. Cf. Ray Huang,
1587, A Year of No Significance
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991), p. 11.

32. I. Iannaccone,
Misurare il cielo: l’antica astronomia cinese
, cit., p. 17.

33. I. Iannaccone,
Misurare il cielo: l’antica astronomia cinese
, cit., pp. 7 ff.

v

From Nanchang to Beijing and Nanjing, 1596–1598

And so, in my view, Cathay is none other than China.

—Matteo Ricci
1

The emperor is as distant as the heavens are high.

—Chinese saying

The Conjecture about Cathay, the Order to
Reach Beijing, and the Gifts for the Emperor

Ricci led an intense and industrious life in Nanchang and earned a reputation for his knowledge in the fields of culture, ethics, and astronomy. Many
shidafu
were prompted by a reading of the Jesuit’s treatises on friendship and memory and by admiration for his European-style sundials to hold banquets in his honor. Ricci never declined an invitation and rushed from one house to another, “with no time to catch his breath,”
2
in the hope that success in the local society would foster his missionary work. His companion, João Soerio, had adapted well to life in the mission and studied the Confucian classics under his guidance with great commitment. Despite the considerable degree of integration achieved, however, few conversions were made. After fourteen years of missionary work in China, the total number of baptized converts for all the residences was little over a hundred,
3
a modest figure that seemed unlikely to increase substantially in the immediate future.

Ricci was still convinced that it was better to eschew the facile, immediate success that could be obtained by baptizing large numbers of people regardless of the quality of their newfound faith and to aim instead at long-term achievement built on solid foundations and deeply considered conversion. Knowing the peculiarities of Chinese society, so rich in established traditions and loath to give the exclusive commitment to a new religion required by the Jesuits, Ricci preferred to proceed “on leaden feet,” as he wrote to Superior General Acquaviva
4
to justify the delay in achieving the results expected of him by the ecclesiastical authorities. He had no intention of abandoning the more difficult and ambitious goal he had set for himself of persuading the literati to convert by showing them the superiority of European science and culture and by emphasizing the compatibility of Confucianism and Christianity. Whenever an exchange of views with an intellectual offered fresh food for thought, the Jesuit took note of the subjects addressed so as to develop them in greater depth in his catechism.

The missionary always managed to find time for study and reflection without neglecting his correspondence. The amount of mail he received had increased over the years, and he found himself obliged to reply to as many as twenty letters at the same time and to repeat the same account of life in the mission over and over. With the passing of the years, his customary European correspondents had been joined by new friends among the
shidafu
, who sent letters from other provinces that Ricci answered in Chinese, thus adding considerably to the burden of writing.

One day, the post included a letter from Girolamo Costa informing him that both of his parents had passed away. On October 13, 1596, a few days later, Ricci sought comfort in writing to his brother, the canon Antonio Maria. They had been out of touch for a long time, and the Jesuit, who had just turned forty-four, asked for detailed information about all the other members of the family. “The news about me is that I am already old and very busy here in China, where I have spent so many years and expect to end my life.”
5
In actual fact, Giovanni Battista Ricci was certainly still alive in 1596, but the Jesuit was to go on believing Costa’s erroneous information for a long time,
6
as rectification did not arrive until a few years later, by which time his father really had passed away. The delay in receiving news of loved ones far away and the uncertainty attendant on sending correspondence by sea were among the torments that plagued the missionaries. Moreover, the customary risk of shipwreck had been combined for some years now with the danger of attack by English and above all Dutch pirates. While expeditions were still being sent out on unsuccessful attempts to reach the Spice Islands and Cathay by a northern route from Europe, the fleets of the new sea powers had also begun to sail the waters of the Indian Ocean with the aim of ending the Portuguese monopoly of trade with China.

Ricci often thought about the identity of Cathay, his journey to Nanjing the previous year, and the possibility that the country where Marco Polo had lived was in fact China, a conjecture he had communicated to no one so far, at least as far as we can tell on the basis of surviving letters. It was finally mentioned as “a curiosity that I think Your Reverence and others will be interested to hear” at the end of the periodical report sent to Superior General Acquaviva in October 1596. Ricci explained that he had been struck by the similarity between the Yangtze and the “
Chian
” described by Polo, and he noted the presence of many bridges in Nanjing, albeit not the thousands counted by the Venetian merchant in “
Chinsai
.” He then suggested that Cathay was the name used by the “Tartars” for China, and he ended with no hesitation: “In my opinion, Cathay is none other than China . . . few can know it better than we do.”
7

While there is no record of any reply from Rome, Ricci was determined to collect fresh evidence to support his conjecture and to return to the question when he finally managed to reach Beijing, the city which would, if he were proved correct, correspond to the “
Cambalù
” (Khanbalik) where Polo had lived at the court of the “
Gran Cane
” (Great Khan).

The idea of moving to Beijing was always with him, and Valignano had also stressed repeatedly that the founding of a mission in the capital remained the most important goal for progress in the work of evangelization. Their hope was to obtain permission from the Son of Heaven to preach the Gospel throughout the territories of the empire. Only then, with the emperor’s endorsement, would it be possible to make thousands or even millions of converts, as Ricci sometimes dreamed.

The idea of sending a papal embassy to the emperor, which Ruggieri had left to prepare nearly ten years earlier, was now definitively abandoned, even by Superior General Acquaviva. Having considered the situation, Valignano decided to wait no longer for help from Rome and Europe but rather to assign Ricci the task of traveling to Beijing and pleading the cause of Christianity before Wanli. Who indeed would be better able than Li Madou to obtain the permits, overcome the difficulties, cope with the unexpected, and negotiate with officials to achieve this goal?

In order to provide Ricci with greater autonomy in decision making with a view to this undertaking, Valignano appointed him superior of the China mission in 1597 as successor to Duarte de Sande and immediately sent him the gifts for the emperor that had been stored in Macao. In his history of the mission, Ricci describes a mechanical table clock sent by Superior General Acquaviva that rang the hours and quarter hours in three different tones, a clock from the bishop of Manila, a Spanish painting of the Virgin, and a painting of Christ from the Italian school. It is probable that the gifts also already included
8
the two glass prisms and the
manicordio
(a portable table harpsichord) that were to appear in the complete list of the gifts presented by the Jesuits to the emperor in Beijing.
9

Having taken delivery of these items, Ricci resolved to prepare the journey to Beijing in every detail so as to avoid a second failure. Recalling the Chinese saying “The emperor is as distant as the heavens are high,” which he had often heard officials repeat in the provinces, he hoped in his heart to reach the heavens this time.

The Imperial Examinations for Entry into the Bureaucracy

Nanchang suddenly filled up with people in 1597 in the month known as the eighth moon in the Chinese calendar and September in the Gregorian. As happened every three years in all the provincial capitals, candidates for the imperial examinations arrived in the company of friends and relatives. The streets were so full of men dressed in silk that it was difficult to make any headway through the crowd. It was the first time since his arrival in China that Ricci had witnessed this sort of collective delirium of hopes, dreams, and disappointments lasting all month and culminating in the week of examinations. The Jesuit was the first Westerner to give Europeans an eyewitness account, in his letters and in his history of the mission, of the rituals and mechanisms of the periodical renewal of the ruling class.
10

The squares were teeming with life. Peddlers poured in from nearby towns with produce from the country, markets sprouted everywhere, the shops filled up with goods, and fortune-tellers were to be found on every street corner ready to predict the results. There were four thousand candidates selected from the cream of the “budding talents” in the province, and only ninety-five, the quota set by law for the Jiangxi province, would graduate as
juren
or provincial graduate. Beginning on the nineteenth of the month and ending ten days later, the examinations were held in a huge prisonlike building surrounded by walls and four watchtowers. After being thoroughly searched, the candidates were locked in the four thousand tiny cells, furnished with a table and a bench for sleeping, to take the three written exams, each lasting two days. Kept in total isolation, they were allowed only two brushes, ink, and sheets of paper to write on. The frugal meals were served in the cells by the proctors. Any candidate falling seriously ill during the examinations was let out of the building through a gate in the outer walls and was taken home, as physicians were not allowed to enter. Conditions in the small rooms were particularly unpleasant when the weather was bad, as the openings made in the doors so that the proctors could ensure compliance with the rules exposed the candidates to wind and rain with no possibility of shelter. There was no way of copying from other candidates, and concealing notes was practically impossible, even though some highly imaginative stratagems were devised, as shown by the white undershirt covered all over with Confucian quotations now in the Gest Oriental Library at Princeton.
11
Anyone caught cheating was expelled and punished, but numerous attempts were nevertheless made to break the rules and pass the examinations by dishonest means.

As it was rumored that bribery had proved successful in the past, the members of the boards of examiners were now appointed by the ministry of rites and were sent directly from the capital so as to avoid any repetition of such occurrences. The case giving rise to the most talk had taken place twenty years earlier in 1574, when the grand secretary Zhang Juzheng was accused of persuading the examiners to pass his previously eliminated son. This was never proved, however, and many suspected that the episode was just part of a smear campaign launched against the powerful and controversial
guan
by his political adversaries.

The candidates were required to comment on passages from the Confucian classics in accordance with set and unchangeable criteria. Written in black ink, the compositions were handed in together with the names and surnames of the candidates and their parents under personal seal. They were then copied in anonymous form in red ink by an army of scribes. A selection process involving three different groups of examiners whittled the number down to 2,000, then 1,000, and finally 190, twice the number of places available. Finally, on the 29th of the month, a fourth group of examiners chose the best 95 compositions and published the list of successful candidates in order of merit. It was a great occasion for all of them and a real triumph for the first on the list. The family of every new
juren
enjoyed the moment of “glory and paradise,” as Ricci put it.

The procedures for the third-level examinations held in Beijing were much the same, but the honor awaiting the three hundred
jinshi
or metropolitan graduates was still greater, and the first in order of merit became a sort of national hero. Li Madou took an interest in the examinations, as many members of the candidates’ families took advantage of their stay in the city to visit the “sage from the West.”

Once the excitement of the examinations was over, the city slipped back into its customary routine, and Ricci resumed his plans for the journey to Beijing. The most important thing was to make contact with authoritative
guan
capable of advising him on how to approach the imperial court. The Jesuit discarded the idea of seeking the aid of one of the imperial princes on learning that the emperor’s relatives were regarded with suspicion at court and their intercession would only prove counterproductive. The Jesuit then recalled Wang Zhongming, the important official he had met in Shaozhou a few years earlier. The mandarin had just been recalled to Nanjing for a second term of office as minister of rites and would certainly have contacts at the court in Beijing. Aware that Wang Zhongming might well have occasion to pass through Shaozhou and to visit the residence during one of his journeys to the island of Hainan, Ricci asked the Jesuits there—namely Lazzaro Cattaneo, assisted at the time by the Portuguese João da Rocha, the Sicilian Niccolò Longobardo, and the Chinese novice Francisco Martines—to request his help. Their situation in Shaozhou was somewhat precarious, as the hostility of the local population was now so great that they had been forced to demolish the chapel in which they gathered to pray, but the mission was still operating.

It was well into 1598 by the time Minister Wang passed through Shaozhou and was informed of the missionaries’ intentions. He promised his aid and decided to leave immediately for Nanchang, accompanied by Cattaneo and Da Rocha, to discuss the undertaking with Ricci in person. Relieved to hear that Li Madou intended to pay all the expenses of the journey to Beijing himself, the
guan
ascertained that the gifts for the Son of Heaven were appropriate and pronounced the project of obtaining an audience with the emperor feasible. In order to help his friends, he suggested that Ricci and Cattaneo should follow him to Nanjing, where it would be possible to seek the right contacts and secure admittance to the presence of Wanli. Without further ado, the two Jesuits; their Chinese brethren Zhong Mingren and You Wenhui, respectively christened Sebastião Fernandes and Manuel Pereira; and some servants embarked with Minister Wang on June 25, 1598, leaving João da Rocha and João Soerio to hold the fort in Nanchang.