Authors: Michela Fontana
In the first composition, entitled “My Hopes for Those in High Places,” Ricci urged the monarch to honor the Lord of Heaven, to do good, and to be impartial in judging his subjects. He then went on to give sage advice on how to cultivate the virtues and seek spiritual peace in the knowledge of being at the service of the Creator. The last song, “Death Makes Inroads Everywhere,” addressed the subject of death, recalling that it strikes rich and poor, stupid and wise, all alike. While Wanli’s reaction to this gift is not known, the songs enjoyed success also outside the imperial court. The literati were eager to read them and praised Li Madou for his highly Confucian intention “to teach their king to govern this reign well and to live virtuously in keeping with the demands of his position.”
17
Imprisonment in the “Foreigners’ Castle”
While Pantoja went to the court for the daily lessons in Renaissance music, Ricci began the customary round of calls on mandarins whose names he had been given in Nanjing in the hope that they might help to establish his position in the city on a sound basis and thus free him from the tutelage of the eunuch Ma Tang. As these dignitaries were, however, all afraid of compromising themselves through dealings with a foreigner and refused to receive him, he was forced to admit that Ma Tang’s intervention had proved useful in securing their arrival at the imperial court and even thanked the Lord for having brought them together.
The future looked very uncertain. Even though the missionaries had been well received at court, their position was precarious and ambiguous because their entry into the capital and presentation of gifts had not taken place under the supervision of the ministry of rites through the office of reception as required by protocol. The head of the office was offended because he had not met the Jesuits and inspected their gifts before their delivery to the Forbidden City, and he was particularly annoyed with Ma Tang for his interference. Being unable to take any action against the eunuch, the
guan
vented his anger on the missionaries by sending a group of guards and agents to order them to report to the ministry of rites and clarify their position.
The soldiers imprisoned the Jesuits in their house and tied them up for fear that they might escape. The agent of Ma Tang who kept constant watch over the missionaries came to their defense and offered them safer accommodation, but Ricci declined, thinking it preferable to give his own version of the facts to the officials at the ministry and show that he had acted in good faith.
The eunuch accompanied him to the ministry in order to intimidate the
guan
but was forced to stand aside. Ricci was taken before the head of the office of reception and kept kneeling for more than an hour before being questioned. Accused of failure to comply with the law, he explained that he had been unable to free himself of the tutelage of Ma Tang and added that he had been living in China for many years and therefore assumed that the protocol established for visiting foreign ambassadors did not apply in his case.
Even though the mandarin seemed to be convinced of the Westerners’ good faith, he refused to free them and had them moved to what Ricci called the “foreigners’ castle,” where all foreign ambassadors were required to live until their audience with the Son of Heaven. This was a dilapidated building that provided accommodation for over a thousand people a year in small rooms with no doors or furnishings that seemed more appropriate for sheep than human beings, as Ricci observed on entering. Moreover, the “foreigners’ castle” was a sort of prison. Those lodged there were allowed out only when summoned to the court or in order to return to their homeland. The only positive element in this very disagreeable situation was that Li Madou was granted preferential treatment because of his friends in high places. The director assigned the missionaries a small apartment with chairs, tables, mats, and silk blankets for the night, and invited them to dine with him more than once during their stay, displaying a keen interest in mathematics and astronomy. He was delighted to receive the gift of a celestial globe.
Ricci initially thought that the building accommodated only ambassadors from tributary countries, but he soon discovered that the guests were much more varied. Many were members of delegations sent from distant lands to pay homage to the Son of Heaven, the already high number of which had increased over the years during the Ming period, after Yongle, the third emperor, had initiated diplomatic relations with the countries of Central and Southeast Asia by sending out Chinese emissaries. Most of the countries in the neighboring regions were willing to accept the status of vassal states and adopt the Chinese calendar as a sign of submission to the emperor in exchange for access to the empire’s products, most importantly silk, which was in great demand in every part of the world. The delegations of representatives of foreign governments had, however, been joined over the years by ever-increasing numbers of merchants passing themselves off as ambassadors, who arrived in China from more or less distant lands in search of business opportunities. The mechanism was very simple. All they had to do was turn up at the frontier, declare their desire to pay homage to the emperor, and display some gifts, not necessarily of any great value, whereupon permission would be granted for a certain number to continue their journey to the capital entirely at the expense of the Chinese government.
Once inside China, the merchants set about buying goods to sell in Beijing. After the presentation of their gifts at the court, they then bought Chinese goods for sale on return to their own countries. Even though the ac
commodation provided during their stay in the capital was the most unpleasant imaginable and their movements were kept under the strictest control, the bogus ambassadors obtained substantial financial benefits. Though well aware of the real purpose of these sham embassies, the Chinese government turned a blind eye and allowed the merchants to do good business, as they considered it an easy way to establish cordial relationships with foreign countries and discourage hostile actions. Ricci was astonished at this practice, which he describes as follows in his history of the mission: “They deceive the King of China into thinking that all the world is his and pays him tribute, to the great sorrow of those with a better understanding, who see that it is rather China that pays them tribute.”
18
Having clarified the identity of his fellow prisoners, Ricci took advantage of the opportunity to talk to merchants from Korea, Siam, Cochin China, Burma, Formosa, Tibet, and Mongolia, and he conversed at great length with a group of Muslims from Central Asia who were familiar with Europe. They had done very good business by purchasing crates of rhubarb at the border and selling it in the capital at a handsome profit, and now they planned to buy silk before leaving for their homeland to sell it. Their gifts for the emperor were jade, diamond tips used by the Chinese to work porcelain, and lapis lazuli, the only really precious objects that Ricci saw in the castle. Most of the other merchants brought worthless gifts like half-starved horses or swords and armor that were no more than rusty scrap iron. Ricci’s long conversations with the “Saracen” merchants in the gloomy palace not only supplied precious information about their countries of origin and the regions of the empire they had traveled through, but also further evidence that China was Cathay and Beijing Khanbalik, as the Muslims again confirmed that the Middle Kingdom and its capital were still known in their lands by the names that Marco Polo used. The Jesuit wrote to his superiors in India and Europe immediately to reaffirm his discovery and assured them that they “could have all their maps of the world corrected.” Once again, there was no reply.
Having adapted with some difficulty to the hardships of life in the castle, Ricci learned from his fellow prisoners that the arrival and departure of groups of ambassadors were marked by sumptuous banquets with musical entertainment and such an abundance of food that the leftovers were sufficient to feed the “guests” in the fortress for several days, as long as they managed to keep them safe from the avaricious guards. Ricci was astonished at this waste of public money, even though he did understand the reasons for such generosity. When those in charge let it be known that they would be willing to allow the missionaries to take part in these banquets in exchange for a small fee, Ricci answered that he had no interest in that kind of overindulgence and would, on the contrary, be willing to pay in order to be sure that nothing of the kind was organized in his honor.
Notes
1. FR, p. 123, no. 4.
2. Jacques Gernet,
Le Monde chinois
(Paris: A. Colin, 1972), [trad. it. Torino: Einaudi, 1978, p. 411].
3. See P. Buckley Ebrey, op. cit., p. 201.
4. Published in China in 1610 and translated into English by Clement Egerton as
The Golden Lotus
, 4 vols. (London: 1938). The translation by David Tod Roy (
The Plum in the Golden Vase, or Chin P’ing Mei
, Princeton University Press) is still incomplete at the time of this writing.
5. Mario Sabattini and Paolo Santangelo,
Storia della Cina
(Rome-Bari: Laterza, 1996).
6. FR, book IV, ch. XII, p. 124, no. 1.
7. FR, book IV, ch. XII, pp. 123–24, no. 5.
8. FR, book IV, ch. XII, pp. 123–24, no. 4.
9. Crowned by a gigantic portrait of Mao Zedong, this gate now provides access to the northern side of the huge square of the same name.
10. This area included the present-day Beihai Park and the Zhongnanhai district, where the most important offices of the People’s Republic of China are now located, as well as the private homes of the highest officials.
11. Wanli reigned for forty-seven years, from 1573 to 1620, longer than any other Ming emperor. The second longest was the forty-four-year reign of Jiajing from 1522 to 1566.
12. The information in the following lines is drawn from the above-cited work by R. Huang.
13. FR, book IV, ch. XII, p. 125.
14. Ibid., p. 131.
15. See Pasquale D’Elia, “Sonate e canzoni italiane alla corte di Pechino in 1601,”
Civiltà Cattolica
96, no. 3 (1945): pp. 158–65; “Musica e canti italiani a Pechino (marzo–aprile 1601),”
Rivista degli studi orientali
30 (1955): pp. 131–45.
16. FR, book IV, ch. XII, pp. 134–35, no. 6.
17. Ibid., p. 135.
18. Ibid., book V, ch. XIV, p. 433.
v
Beijing, 1601
I recently saw Ricci’s map with his notes, the maps printed by Europeans, and the map of Nanjing printed on six sheets, and realized for the first time the immensity of the heavens and the earth.
—Liang Zhou
1
The Master taught under four categories: culture, proper conduct, doing one’s utmost, and making good on one’s word.
—Confucius,
Analects
(7, 25)
The Audience in the Forbidden City
After the Jesuits had spent a few days in the “foreigners’ castle” around the end of February and the beginning of March 1601, the director sent a messenger with the news that Ricci had been waiting for ever since he first set foot on Chinese soil. They had been granted an audience with the emperor.
The missionaries hoped for a meeting with Wanli that would constitute a turning point in their work, an opportunity to ask for permission to preach the Christian religion all through the empire, but this long-cherished dream was not so close to fulfillment. It was indeed clear that the Jesuits had only been admitted to a general audience and were very unlikely to be allowed to speak to Wanli, even though Ricci may have dreamed of thus initiating closer contact with the Son of Heaven.
In preparation for the ceremony, the two missionaries received instruction from officials responsible for protocol, who showed them how to kneel before the emperor and kowtow, bowing their foreheads to the ground three times. They also tried on the special robes of red damask silk and gold lacquered caps and were each given an ivory tablet called a
hu
to be held in front of the face as a sign of respect. Woken long before dawn on the great day, they were led through the dark and still deserted streets into the Imperial City all the way to a gate providing access to the Forbidden City, where they waited for hours in the bitter cold together with a group of foreign ambassadors and officials summoned to give thanks for favors, appointments, and awards.
The deep blue sky lightened and took on a rosy hue at sunrise as the golden beams spread over the Forbidden City and brought the colors to life. The dark red of the walls began to glow and the yellow of the roofs to shine. The gate finally opened, and the three thousand soldiers of the night guard emerged with five elephants. Ricci and Pantoja, the first Europeans to enter the heart of the Ming empire, passed through the massive wall and found themselves in a huge courtyard right in front of the arcade of the Palace of Supreme Harmony and the five doors to the chamber where the imperial throne of gilded rosewood normally stood, surrounded by dark red columns decorated with golden dragons. The throne had been moved outside for the audience and positioned to face the courtyard below.
2
Ricci estimated that the enormous square could hold about thirty thousand people. The marble staircase rising to the imposing edifice was lined on either side by eunuchs holding colored imperial banners. Ambassadors, soldiers, and dignitaries were arranged in perfectly aligned rows and were positioned according to rank. Civilians occupied the eastern section, which was considered more prestigious, and military commanders the western. The courtyard was only one of the areas of the imperial complex made occasionally accessible to the public, while the rest of the citadel remained hidden and impenetrable.
The Forbidden City was a galaxy of palaces, gardens, streams, and pavilions,
3
each of which was endowed with an evocative poetic name exemplifying the sophisticated use of language in which the Chinese excelled. Rectangular in shape and covering an area of over seventy-two hectares, its typically Chinese structure still preserves its extraordinary charm intact today despite the passage of time. The layout of the buildings was designed to reproduce the celestial order and draw a parallel between the emperor and the pole star, the throne room and the pavilions for the imperial rites being located at the center of the great complex along the north-south axis, with the other buildings symmetrically arranged on either side to mirror the positions of the circumpolar stars. The similarity between the heavens and the earth was not perfect because the layout of the Forbidden City, unlike the nearby Temple of Heaven, was a triumph of straight lines and rectangular geometric shapes with no reference to the circularity of the celestial vault. The idea of cosmic space was suggested rather by the vastness of the courtyards and the succession of walls and gates, apparently all the same but actually differing in size and minute details, which spread out to give the idea of a closed but infinite universe.
The main gates were located at the four cardinal points of the compass, and the most important was the Meridian Gate or Wumen, a one-story construction with the customary double-eaved roof of yellow tiles and three arches. The central arch was for the exclusive use of the emperor, the only exceptions being the empress on her wedding day and the three candidates ranked highest in the third-level examinations held in the imperial palace. Running through the first large courtyard on the other side of the Meridian Gate was a small watercourse, known as the Golden Stream, crossed by five marble bridges. The Gate of Supreme Harmony to the north gave access to the true centers of power. Beyond it lay the huge courtyard into which Ricci had been admitted, where the three palaces of the imperial rites stood one after the other on an enormous marble platform. This was reached by three flights of steps, in the center of which a gigantic ramp of white marble carved with a pattern of intertwining lotus flowers looked like an unrolled carpet. In wet weather, the rainwater was channeled onto this surface from either side of the balustrade through the mouths of over a thousand stone dragons, thus transforming the structure into an unusual fountain. The first building was the Palace of Supreme Harmony, which housed the throne and provided the setting for the most important ceremonies, such as the coronation of the Son of Heaven. The smaller Palace of Perfect Harmony was where the emperor performed the preparatory rites before proceeding to the Temple of Heaven. Banquets in honor of the ambassadors of tributary countries and the third-level imperial examinations were held in the Palace of Protecting Harmony.
The way out of the elevated structure was by a staircase to the north adorned with the largest marble panel in the Forbidden City, a block of 250 metric tons decorated with clouds and dragons that had been hauled from the outskirts of Beijing one winter along a 50-kilometer road of ice created by pouring water onto the ground. Farther north, the Gate of Celestial Purity led to the imperial apartments, the most private part of the citadel and surrounded by yet another ring of walls. Located on a single-story marble platform were the Palace of Celestial Purity, where the emperor slept, the Pavilion of Union, containing the throne room, and the Palace of Earthly Tranquility, where the empress lived. A garden to the north led to the Gate of Spiritual Value, the exit from the Forbidden City.
The buildings used for minor ceremonies and the quarters of the palace eunuchs and the emperor’s other wives and concubines were located in the greenery on either side of the central axis where the six most important palaces stood. They too bore poetic names such as Benevolent Tranquility, Peaceful Longevity, Eternal Spring, Concentrated Beauty, and Admirable Benevolence.
Symbolism informed the choice of every color and decorative detail, a concentration of centuries of tradition that encompassed every element of the architecture and endowed it with ritual significance. The most recurrent image, painted on columns or carved in marble, was the emperor’s dragon emblem, together with the phoenix of the empress. The four curved sides of every roof were crowned with a procession of small majolica sculptures of dragons, lions, and mythological beasts to provide protection against evil spirits, its length being proportional to the importance of the building. This was preceded in some cases by a guardian spirit on a winged horse, to which a small monkey, the symbol of dexterity, was added only above the throne room. In the gardens, enormous stone turtles symbolized longevity, strength, and endurance. The crane-shaped braziers of bronze on the terraces were emblems of good luck. The entrances of the most important buildings were flanked by the typical pairs of stone or bronze lions with curly manes and gaping jaws, symbols of power that served to intimidate visitors. The number nine, associated with the organization of the universe, was constantly recalled on the red gates providing access to the palaces and courtyards, each of which was adorned with eighty-one gilded studs laid out in nine rows of nine elements.
It was easy to lose track in observing the details of a world so rich in symbolic allusions, just as it was easy to lose your way on walking through the countless courtyards and the small side doors leading into long, narrow corridors like the passageways of a labyrinth. The Forbidden City has been described as a disorienting maze of straight lines, or a nightmare of déjà vu. The symbolic heart of the great and ancient Chinese empire unquestionably communicated the idea of power and strength but also a sense of peace and immensity. Matteo Ricci saw practically nothing outside the courtyard where the audiences were held and devoted only a few lines of his writings to a description of the Forbidden City, a place that was to remain as secret and distant for him as it was for all the emperor’s subjects. Despite his subsequent visits to the Forbidden City, he was never able to explore it freely, and he never managed to form an overall impression, as his knowledge was limited to a few pavilions and corridors.
Ricci waited for the audience to begin, together with the others in that vast courtyard in front of the Palace of Supreme Harmony. The black-clad eunuchs in charge moved swiftly up and down the rows to make sure that everything was in order, and the censors kept watch for any suspicious movement. Finally, a precise order was echoed from line to line, and the ritual commenced.
The participants were taken onto the terrace in groups by officials who prompted them aloud in their performance of the ritual gestures and formulas so as to avoid any mistakes. On arrival before the imperial throne, they bowed and repeated the greeting “ten thousand years,” a formula used exclusively to wish the Son of Heaven a long life, while keeping the
hu
in front of their faces. On looking at the throne, Ricci realized that there was no one seated there, but he knelt down just the same when his turn came and addressed the phrase to the empty seat like all of those before and after him. The audience, organized by palace officials in accordance with a set schedule out of respect for tradition, was a grotesque charade performed every time in the absence of the leading character, as Wanli had stopped taking part many years earlier. Even though Ricci had probably been warned that he was not going to meet the Son of Heaven, it is reasonable to assume that he felt some disappointment. There is, however, no mention of this in his surviving letters or his history of the mission, where the audience is described with no comment. Ricci did not see the emperor at the audience in February 1601 and was never to meet him. He simply had to resign himself to this.
Other Memorials on the Ricci Case
Having ascertained that direct contact with Wanli was impossible, the Jesuit was determined to obtain permission to live in Beijing and intended to do so in compliance with the set procedures. He thus lost no time in calling at the ministry of rites, where he was received by the vice minister. When he handed over his memorial and asked for it to be forwarded to the emperor, it was immediately clear that the mandarin was intent on handling the matter in his own way, raising the customary difficulties for the sole purpose of demonstrating his power. Ricci found himself in much the same situation every time he had any dealings with the bureaucracy, just as nerve-wracking in China as it probably was in pontifical Rome or the kingdom of Spain.
The vice minister explained that he could not deliver the missionary’s memorial but would have to write a new one himself with his appraisal of the situation after a customary examination of the case. He thus ordered yet another inventory of the Jesuits’ assets, which established that the
daoren
possessed no valuables but only books and holy relics, and then sent a memorial to the court with instructions that it was to be kept secret. Ricci ended up getting wind of its contents all the same. As was to be expected, it was by no means favorable. It can be summarized as follows: “Li Madou claims that he is from the Far West, but there is no mention of any such place in the Ming dynastic histories and it is therefore impossible to know whether he is telling the truth. Since he has come to offer tributes to the emperor after living on Chinese territory for twenty years, the law for the treatment of foreign ambassadors is not applicable in his case. The gifts he offered to the emperor are insignificant and of little value. Moreover, objects [the holy relics] have been found in his baggage that he claims to be the bones of spirits, but if spirits have no bodies, how can Li Madou have their bones?”
4
The document went on to urge that no gifts should be accepted from the missionaries and accused Ricci of having presented objects through the intercession of the eunuch Ma Tang and therefore sharing his guilt in the violation of procedure. It ended with the suggestion that Li Madou should be given some lengths of silk, a hat, and a belt, and ordered to go back to his own country. He should not be allowed to reside in Beijing or Nanjing because of the risk that he might cultivate his good relations with the eunuchs and incite rebellion. Even though the suggested gift of a hat and belt, typical accessories of state officials, was a mark of consideration, the tone of the document left no room for doubt. The stance adopted by the vice minister was the result of a power struggle between the eunuchs and the ministry of rites over the case of Li Madou, and the Jesuits were to bear the brunt of it. Ricci felt sure, however, that the emperor and the palace eunuchs would be on his side, and events proved him right. The memorial received no reply, which was something quite extraordinary for a document sent by the ministry of rites. The emperor evidently did not agree.