Authors: Michela Fontana
Ricci send the work to Superior General Acquaviva, emphasizing that the mission’s scientific work was essential to its success in preaching the Gospel and asking to be sent books so that he would no longer be forced to rely solely on memories of what he had learned at the Roman College. This subject had also been mentioned in a letter to Girolamo Costa the previous March: “My lack of books is such that most of the things I publish are what I can remember.”
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The letter to Acquaviva also reiterated his request for a Jesuit astronomer “capable of continuing what I have begun with my limited strength, few books, and little knowledge.”
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The indefatigable Jesuit was never to see this entreaty answered.
The Imperial Map of the World
In taking stock of the situation, as was inevitable after a quarter of a century in the Middle Kingdom, Ricci reflected on the validity of his method of spreading the Gospel. He was more strongly convinced than ever that in a country as peculiar as China—where the state administration was entrusted to a bureaucracy of literati, religion played a marginal role, and absolute, exclusive faith in one personal God was an alien concept—the decision to accord priority to the quality of conversions, even at the expense of quantity, was still the right one. As he wrote to Girolamo Costa, “We intend to be few but good rather than many but less deserving to be called Christians. As the fruit is now being planted rather than harvested, what we are doing at present cannot be judged on the number of Christians.”
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There were now “more than two thousand” converts in China,
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by his reckoning, as against a total of twenty-one missionaries—thirteen Jesuit fathers and eight lay brothers and young Chinese novices. Ricci regarded these figures as satisfactory and saw the great prestige enjoyed by the Society of Jesus among nonconverts—due above all to the circulation of his own religious, moral, and scientific writings—as proof of success as well.
If the publications helped to make the Society of Jesus known and esteemed, the stability of the China mission was ensured primarily by the special status the Jesuits enjoyed in Beijing, where they lived at the state’s expense under the protection of the emperor, a privilege that shielded them from any hostile initiative. With the conversion of Xu Guangqi, an exemplary official who was to rise to the highest ranks of the imperial bureaucracy, the Christian religion reached the upper echelons of the Chinese state. Paul Xu was the prototype Confucian Christian, the finest example of how religious faith and fidelity to the state could coexist. If a larger number of important
guan
could be persuaded to convert, as Ricci hoped, it would be easier to spread the faith through the other layers of society.
Even though Ricci envisaged a bright future for the China mission and was optimistic about the results that his successors would obtain, the Jesuit authorities still considered the position of the missionaries in China precarious and insisted on the need to obtain imperial permission to reside indefinitely on Chinese soil and preach the Christian religion. This recognition alone, in Rome’s view, would guarantee the continuity of the mission after the deaths of its founder and the emperor Wanli.
Ricci thought for a long time about how to comply with his superiors’ instructions but could see no realistic way of doing so. Xu Guangqi suggested sending a memorial announcing his readiness to relinquish the imperial stipend, but Ricci decided against following this advice in the belief that the Jesuits’ greatest form of protection was precisely the fact of living at the state’s expense. Ricci knew that he still enjoyed Wanli’s protection, as demonstrated by the fact that he could go in and out of the Imperial City without having to ask for permission and he visited the Forbidden City regularly with Pantoja to check on the clocks. One day they were even invited by a group of eunuchs to join some dignitaries on the wall surrounding the imperial palace and to enjoy the extraordinary privilege of gazing upon the world forbidden to common mortals from above.
The emperor, as the eunuchs reported, continued to live in the voluntary seclusion of his apartments, a condition of total isolation that not even the wedding of his fifteen-year-old daughter in 1608 induced him to alter. Wanli’s silence was broken shortly afterward, however, just when the missionaries had given up any hope of further contact with him. One day Ricci and Pantoja were summoned to the offices of the mathematicians in the Imperial City and were told that Wanli wanted twelve copies on silk of the 1602 edition of the map of the world
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as gifts for the princes of the court.
Though deeply flattered, Ricci was very surprised at the request because he had never made the emperor a gift of one of his famous maps for fear that the Son of Heaven might take offense on seeing China represented as a comparatively small part of the entire world. Someone had evidently had the courage to show the emperor one of the many copies of his work, possibly one of those painted in color by the eunuchs in the peace and quiet of the Forbidden City, and Wanli had evidently not been affronted by the size attributed to China. The emperor, in Ricci’s view, thus demonstrated far better judgment than the many mandarins who criticized his representation of the world.
The Jesuit told the eunuchs that he would be honored to comply with Wanli’s wishes but there was a serious obstacle. The wood blocks used for printing were no longer in Beijing. Li Zhizao had taken them to his hometown, and the unauthorized copies produced by the printers had been lost during the great flood that struck the capital in the previous year of 1607. The missionaries hastened to remedy the situation by gathering together the eight blocks commissioned by Li Yingshi for the edition of 1603 and suggested that the eunuchs use them instead. As the
taijian
had no intention of presenting to Wanli any edition of the map other than the one he had asked for, Ricci offered to have a new set of matrices produced that were identical to those of 1602, calculating that this could be done in a month. He promised to embellish them with some new details and also decided to take advantage of this opportunity to include some information about Catholicism reserved exclusively for the Son of Heaven. The eunuchs accepted this proposal and hastened to report it, but the emperor, who was evidently impatient to satisfy his desire, let it be known that there was no need for Li Madou to concern himself so much, and he ordered the
taijian
to produce new matrices on the basis of the existing drawings. This “imperial edition” of just twelve copies
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was completed within the first few months of 1608, and Ricci confined himself to creating two small maps for the emperor, to be hung on either side of the throne.
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Thus it was that the Western representation of the world made its way into the most important chamber in the whole of China.
The End of the Journey: Ricci’s Death
Even though he was always active in embarking on new projects, Ricci felt weaker all the time, and the obligation to receive and return visits, whose frequency showed no sign of slackening, was an “immense labor.”
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It was now 1609, and he was fifty-seven years old, twenty-seven of them spent in China. He often felt weary, the ankle injured years before was becoming increasingly painful, the headaches he had suffered for some time were more frequent, and he was more prone to moments of reflection tinged with bitterness than in the past. As he wrote to Girolamo Costa just one year earlier, “When this [letter] reaches your hands I will have sixty years on my back and will thus be very close to the grave. May it be God’s will that I can complete the last action still left for me to perform in His service and make amends for the past failings.”
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Ricci was now sure that he would never see Europe again. Even if he wanted to do so, he knew that the Chinese would prevent him because the law forbade anyone who had lived in China for too long to return to their native land lest they might hatch some plot against the empire. One day he found himself reflecting on the fact that he was on his own, the sole survivor of the small group of missionaries who had first entered China. Michele Ruggieri had died in Salerno in 1607; Antonio de Almeida and Duarte de Sande, the superior of the mission, had been dead for many years;
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and the irreplaceable Valignano, the man who had supported the China mission most of all, had also passed away, leaving a great void. The new Visitor was Francesco Pasio, the fellow student who had traveled with Ricci and Ruggieri on the carracks bound for the East. Having lived for years in Japan, he had only a superficial knowledge of China, and Ricci feared that he might not understand the principles that he shared with Valignano and that informed his work. Sensing that he had little time left, he thought it his duty to provide his superior with all the information required so that he could continue the work of supporting the mission begun by Valignano and guide the brethren who would be arriving in China in the same spirit after his death.
Wishing to state his position clearly once again, Ricci wrote Pasio a long letter on February 17, 1609, encapsulating the essence of his vision of the missionary work in China.
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The concepts explained so many times to superiors were systematically arranged in consecutive points and were expounded with a certain degree of pedantry and repetition indicative of the importance he attached to defending his work and its underlying principle of cultural accommodation. Ricci sensed that his views were not shared by all the brethren and feared that the work to which he had devoted his entire life might be ruined after his death.
Since Pasio had also evidently been urging the missionaries to obtain authorization from the emperor to preach the Gospel in complete freedom for some time, Ricci explained that only people living in China could imagine the difficulties to be encountered in simply requesting such a concession, let alone being granted it. This was beyond the grasp even of the brethren living in the Chinese provinces far from Beijing, who had no idea of the complex unwritten rules that governed life at the court and the quicksand into which documents addressed to the emperor could sink. Ricci instead had firsthand experience of the complexity of the bureaucratic procedures regarding a memorial and knew that the Son of Heaven was not free to decide by himself even if he was favorably disposed toward the Jesuits. If the request was submitted to the palace eunuchs or officials, Ricci would never know which offices it would be sent to, who it would be read by, what the final decision would be, and what consequences it might give rise to.
Ricci was, however, sure that the missionaries would be able to go on living in peace in China after his death, especially if they demonstrated their independence from the Portuguese in Macao. He declared his optimism as regarded the future of the work of evangelization because the Jesuits enjoyed a good reputation—“Great is the hope of the great harvest to be reaped in this immense realm”—and he considered the results achieved as something of a miracle in view of the initial difficulties. He defended his decision to work with the literati as well as the apostolic strategy based on scientific teaching. After many years of contact with the
shidafu
, Ricci respected them greatly—“The natural intellect of the Chinese is fine and acute”—and was convinced that they could excel in the sciences. He explained to Pasio that the gratitude he had earned by teaching science was a legacy that should not be squandered. If the literati proved so receptive to mathematics, he asked, how would they respond if taught “more abstruse” sciences of a “physical, metaphysical, theological, and supernatural” nature?
Ricci regarded the literati not only as brilliant intellectuals but also—and contrary to the opinion of them current in the West—as inspired by moral principles akin to those of Christianity. He was indeed convinced that the Chinese had practiced a very similar form of religion in ancient times. He rejected the view put forward by some Buddhist sympathizers that the decision to forge an alliance with the literati instead of fighting them was not a form of “flattery,” and he hoped that the new missionaries would take the same approach, as there was enormous potential in China for spreading the Gospel. Given the structure and stability of the Chinese state, if it ever proved possible to convert the emperor, as Ricci sometimes dreamed, the entire population would become Christian and remain so over the years. He earnestly recommended that the new missionaries not neglect the study of the Chinese language and philosophy, which were indispensable if they were to be accepted.
In another shorter letter written on February 17, 1609, to the Portuguese Jesuit João Alvarez,
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his last known missive, Ricci described himself as “old and weary but healthy and strong,” and he expressed the hope that good and numerous reinforcements would be sent to China: “We need a lot of people because the field is so great . . . good people and of good intellect, because our dealings are with shrewd and educated people.” As though wishing to make sure for the last time that his discovery about the identity of the Middle Kingdom had been acknowledged, he then asked if there were still any doubts in Europe that China and Cathay were one and the same.
According to the subsequent reconstruction of events by his brethren, Ricci began to act as though he sensed the end drawing close the following year, in 1610. He commenced negotiations to purchase a site outside the city for use as a burial place for priests. When everything appeared to have been settled, the Chinese owner of the land changed his mind, but Ricci was not in the least put out and astonished his companions by saying that they would soon find an even better burial plot. Shortly after this, he decided to start building a church because the chapel was no longer big enough to hold the numerous believers. It was to be built in the European style so as to avoid its being mistaken for a Buddhist temple, and De Ursis was to supervise the work. After the various chapels used so far, this would be the first Catholic church ever constructed on Chinese soil.