Authors: Michela Fontana
Ricci was overjoyed at the return to Beijing of Li Zhizao, who fell seriously ill however soon after his arrival. The Jesuit rushed to his friend’s bedside and watched over him day and night for two weeks until he was out of danger. This devotion was rewarded because Li Zhizao finally decided after so many years, as a token of gratitude, to make Li Madou happy and convert. He was baptized with the Christian name of Leo.
Ricci finished writing his history of the mission in the early months of 1610, put his study full of books in order, collected all his papers, and burned his letters. He then wrote two documents, one containing instructions for the brethren in Beijing and the other addressed to Niccolò Longobardo, who was to become the superior of the mission after his death. He wrote Lazzaro Cattaneo a letter to say farewell forever.
21
The city began to fill up in March as thousands and thousands of candidates arrived for the imperial examinations in April, as well as countless
guan
for their customary three-year assessment in the capital. The influx of people also meant the customary increase in the number of visitors, some of whom had no qualms about turning up at the Jesuits’ house even in the night and asking to meet the famous Li Madou. Ricci skipped his meals in order to receive them all, but the increased workload was now more than he could bear.
On May 3, after the end of the examinations, the Jesuit felt his strength fading fast and took to his bed in a room on the ground floor, where it was easier to receive visitors. When asked by the brethren how he felt, he answered serenely that the illness would lead to his death.
Li Zhizao, still convalescent, was informed immediately and sent his own physician to Ricci’s bedside, but the remedies administered proved ineffective. The brethren then called in the six most famous doctors in the city, who disagreed on the diagnosis and prescribed different medicines. As the news of Li Madou’s illness spread, the house filled up with neophytes praying for the missionary’s life. Ricci confessed to De Ursis on the sixth day and managed on the seventh to get out of bed to kneel down and pray and take communion. He then fell into a state of delirium in which he talked about the mission and mentioned the conversion of the emperor. The last rites were administered during a spell of lucidity on the eighth day, May 10. He spoke to the brethren on the ninth and gave them his blessing. When one of them begged him not to abandon the missionaries in such need of his aid, he answered that he was leaving them in front of “a door open to great merits” but not devoid of “danger and suffering.” He asked them to give a loving welcome to the new missionaries from Europe, who would have to face the difficulties of life in a distant country. Then, with the approach of evening, he slipped away almost imperceptibly from life into death.
Wanli’s Tribute
The news of Li Madou’s death spread, and the minister of rites informed the emperor. The missionaries’ house was invaded by friends and converts wishing to present their condolences and see the remains. There was, however, also a constant stream of literati, academicians, ministers, and important government officials, demonstrating with their presence the respect felt for Li Madou, the sage from the West, the author of the map of the world, the book of geometry, the treaty on friendship, and the catechism.
Li Zhizao helped the priests to receive their guests in accordance with the ritual procedures laid down by Chinese tradition for such sad events. The brethren wore the typical white mourning robes of literati and adorned the room containing the remains with funeral vestments of the same color. The visitors announced at the entrance were ushered into a room where they could change into mourning dress and were then taken to see the body, before which they bowed four times. After the second or third bow, one of the missionaries would approach the visitor and say that there was no need to complete those acts of great courtesy, being well aware that the mandarin would continue. The visitor was then taken back to the room to change his dress and was escorted to the threshold of the house for leave-taking. In accordance with another Chinese tradition, the missionaries asked the lay brother You Wenhui, known as Manuel Pereira in Portuguese, to paint a portrait of the deceased. This was the only depiction of the Jesuit produced in China, as Ricci had always refused to pose for portraits except when requested to do so by Wanli. The painting is now in the Church of the Holy Name of Jesus in Rome.
The remains were placed in a wooden coffin obtained by Li Zhizao at his own expense and were taken into the newly built church. Deciding how the burial was to take place, however, presented a serious problem. While the remains of all the Jesuits deceased in China had hitherto been taken back to Macao, the priests were convinced in this case that the journey from Beijing would take too long and that it would be better to find a burial place in the city where the missionary had spent the last nine years of his life. By law, Chinese citizens could be buried only far away from inhabited areas, and it was customary for the deceased to be placed in a wooden casket sealed with a layer of varnish and kept in the family home for as long as two or three years until the burial plot was ready. For foreigners like Ricci, the possibility of burial in China was not even contemplated, even though exceptions were made for the ambassadors of tributary countries who passed away during official visits.
In order to resolve this delicate issue, a friend of the Jesuits advised Pantoja to submit a request asking the emperor to grant a burial plot even though there were no precedents for such an act in the whole of Chinese history. An imperial grant for a tomb was an exceptional privilege even for the Chinese, reserved exclusively for mandarins of great merit or for those whose families made very substantial donations to the state. At the same time, however, everyone knew that Ricci was a special case. Pantoja drafted the request for Wanli, Li Zhizao corrected its style, and other friends read it and promised to facilitate the bureaucratic procedures. The document was submitted to the court on May 18, 1610.
Now as expert as Ricci in dealing with the mandarins, Pantoja busied himself with paying his respects and making gifts to the
guan
capable of assisting the request through the intricate bureaucratic maze and securing its approval. As it was a memorial regarding Li Madou, all of the officials contacted were very willing to help. One of the grand secretaries promised his full support and observed that Xitai certainly deserved not only a burial plot but also the erection of a temple and a statue, as was customary for those performing services of great benefit to society.
Li Zhizao’s contacts at the ministry of rites, Pantoja’s visits of courtesy, and above all the great respect that Ricci had enjoyed at court all served to accelerate the procedures. Just three days after its presentation, the request was shown to Wanli, who gave his consent for it to be examined by the relevant officials and returned for definitive approval in the event of a favorable decision. The request was returned to the Son of Heaven with the blessing of the minister of rites after a month, an exceptionally short period by comparison with the time it normally took for any other memorial, and approval was granted on June 17, 1610. Ricci was to be buried in a plot of land assigned by order of the emperor. It was the greatest honor a foreigner could possibly receive in China.
The imperial officials selected four possible sites and asked the Jesuits to choose the one they thought most suitable for the tomb of the founder of the China mission. Their choice fell on a huge villa of brick and wood with thirty-eight rooms surrounded by a vast plot of land in the locality of Zhala just outside the Fuchengmen, the western gate of the inner city. Built thirty years earlier, it was the property of a
taijian
now in disgrace and imprisoned to await execution. As it had since been transformed into a Buddhist temple and was therefore under the jurisdiction of the ministry of rites, the machinations of the owner’s eunuch friends could not prevent it from being handed over to the Jesuits. Two edicts signed by Huang Jishi, the governor of Beijing, and Wu Daonan, the minister of rites, attested its donation “by order of the emperor.” The missionaries were granted permanent exemption from taxes on their new property, and a plaque was placed over the entrance with the inscription “By Imperial Largess.” The governor then sent a solemn procession with a wooden panel bearing the words “To one who came attracted by justice, to the author of many books, to Li Madou from the Great West” for the tomb that was to be erected there.
Once the house had been cleared of all the Buddhist paintings and ornaments, which the missionaries burned in public in a great bonfire, Ricci’s coffin was taken there on April 22, 1611, nearly a year after his death. Niccolò Longobardo arrived in Beijing on May 3 as the new superior of the mission to supervise the preparations for the burial. After the “cleansing” of the building, a hexagonal chapel was erected at one end of the garden with two semicircular walls stretching out to enclose the area reserved for the graves of missionaries. Ricci’s tomb was placed in the center surrounded by four cypresses, which are considered emblems of mourning in China too. The funeral took place on November 1, All Saints Day, and was attended by the Jesuit brethren together with all of Li Madou’s closest friends, including Xu Guangqi, who returned to Beijing from Shanghai six months after Ricci’s death. As Nicolas Trigault wrote in his account of the ceremony, everyone manifested great sorrow when the coffin was buried, “but above all Doctor Paul, who had always loved the Father in particular, apart from his love for us and the Christian religion.” Xu Guangqi held on to one of the ropes used to lower the coffin and wept, “finding no other way to show his love and grief.”
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A fitting epitaph is provided by this moving description of the missionary’s lot contained in a letter about Ricci’s life in the Far East sent to his brother Orazio five years earlier:
I remember writing in other [letters] to tell my brothers to think often of us priests living in these lands as in voluntary exile, far away not only from our loved ones, our parents, brothers and sisters and relatives, but also from Christian folk and our countrymen, sometimes in places where not one European is to be seen for ten or twenty years. Some, like us in China, never eat bread or drink wine; some, like those in Malacca, live on flour made from trees and others on the roots of plants; some go barefoot with the fierce sun beating down on their heads and the ground scorching their feet, and all in outlandish dress.
Here we are with long beards and hair down to our shoulders in houses even poorer than those of our workers; and many times we have to flee from enemies come to do us harm, as once happened to me, when I jumped out of a window and twisted my ankle, which still causes me pain.
Some are shipwrecked in seas and rivers, and I have had my share of that. Some are crucified by the enemy, some pierced with arrows and others with darts. And those of us that live always have death before our eyes, being among millions of heathens, all of them our enemies; and all this for the love of God, and so that God may forgive us our sins and save us from hell: and with all that, we weep and shed many tears every day, not knowing what God’s judgment will be.
What then must be done by those who are at home with their families and friends in the midst of comfort and pleasure? . . . I cannot in truth look forward to many years more and my hair is already all white. These Chinese wonder that I should be so old at no great age and do not know that they are the cause of my white hair.
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Notes
1. FR, book V, ch. II, p. 302. The work is attributed to Zhuang Zhou, a philosopher who lived in the fourth century
bc
, also known as Zhuangzi or “Master Zhuang.”
2. Letter to Giulio and Girolamo Alaleoni, July 26, 1605; OS II, p. 295.
3. Letter to Claudio Acquaviva, August 15, 1606; OS II, pp. 303–4.
4. J. Gernet,
Chine et christianisme
, cit., p. 194.
5. Pasquale D’Elia, “Sunto Poetico-ritmico di I Dieci Paradossi di Matteo Ricci S.I.,” in
Rivista degli studi orientali
27 (1952): pp. 111–38.
6. FR, book V, ch. II, pp. 303–4.
7. Cit. in Antonella Cotta Ramusino,
Matteo Ricci Li Madou
(Rimini: Guaraldi, 1996), with an introduction by Paolo Aldo Rossi, p. 9; and in J. Spence,
The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci
, cit., p. 22.
8. See chapter 6 (“Euclidean Geometry and the Achievements of Chinese Mathematics”).
9. Letter dated March 6, 1608; OS II, p. 336.
10. Letter dated March 8, 1608; OS II, p. 343.
11. Letter dated March 6, 1608; OS II, p. 338.
12. Letter dated March 6, 1608; OS II, p. 331.
13. This was the third edition, produced with the aid of Li Zhizao. See chapter 13 (“Li Zhizao and Geography: The Third Edition of the Map of the World”).
14. J. D. Day, “The Search for the Origins of the Chinese Manuscript of Matteo Ricci’s Maps,” cit., p. 96.
15. FR, book V, ch. XVII, p. 474, no. 2.
16. Letter to Claudio Acquaviva, August 22, 1608; OS II, p. 367.
17. Letter dated March 6, 1608; OS II, p. 338
18. Almeida died in 1591 and Duarte de Sande in 1599.
19. OS II, pp. 377–87.
20. OS II, p. 388.
21. FR, book V, ch. XXI, p. 546, no. 1.
22. FR, book V, ch. XXII, pp. 627–28.
23. Letter to Ricci’s brother Orazio, May 12, 1605; OS II, p. 279.
v
The Scientific Legacy,
Triumph, and Persecution
All in all, the contribution of the Jesuits, chequered though it was, has characteristics of noble adventure. If the bringing of the science and the mathematics of Europe was for them a means to an end, it stands for all time nevertheless as an example of cultural relations at the highest level between two civilisations theretofore sundered.
—Joseph Needham
1
Those who believe that the religion they profess is true must desire tolerance: in the first place, in order to be themselves tolerated in the countries in which their religion is not dominant; and then, so that their religion can conquer all minds.
—Voltaire,
Treatise on Tolerance
The Jesuit Mathematicians and the Scandal of the Eclipse
A few days after Ricci’s funeral, a eunuch asked the grand secretary Ye Xiangao why Li Madou had been accorded such an extraordinary mark of imperial favor as the granting of a burial plot. The mandarin answered that the translation into Chinese of Euclid’s work would have sufficed by itself to merit such an honor.
2
The remaining brethren and the new arrivals intended to continue the dissemination of Western scientific knowledge begun by the founder of the mission with the crucial aid of their faithful allies Xu Guangqi and Li Zhizao. Just as Ricci had done so many times before, Sabatino de Ursis asked his superiors to send scientific books from Europe along with missionaries skilled in astronomy. As he wrote in a letter dated September 2, 1610, if the mission was to function, it was indispensable to work with both hands, the right for “the things of God” and the left for the spreading of science.
3
The new superior of the mission, Niccolò Longobardo, echoed these sentiments two months later in urging the Jesuit authorities to send “good mathematicians” to China.
4
All this insistence was prompted by the conviction that the time was now ripe to suggest to the Chinese authorities that the task of reforming the calendar might be assigned to the Jesuits.
This belief proved quite correct, and the long-awaited opportunity to demonstrate the validity of their methods soon presented itself. On December 15, 1610, the imperial astronomers calculated the beginning of the solar eclipse with an error of half an hour and supplied incorrect data also as regarded its duration.
5
This blunder, the latest in a long series, caused great outcry. While the minister of rites consulted experts in search of a solution to a problem that now threatened the stability of imperial power, Paul Xu came forward and submitted a memorial suggesting that the correction of the calendar should be entrusted to the Jesuits. While the emperor raised no objection, the proposal aroused the utmost hostility among the court mandarins who were opposed to the involvement of foreigners in matters of state, and the memorial remained unanswered.
Meanwhile, De Ursis set about studying the characteristics of the Chinese calendar with a view to pinpointing possible modifications, and he drew up a report for his superior Pasio in 1612.
6
Given the fundamental differences in approach between Chinese and Western astronomy and the fact that the Chinese divisions of time were unlike the European units, the Jesuit was convinced that radical alteration of the calendar used in the Middle Kingdom was impossible, and it would be better to introduce the adjustments needed to improve the accuracy of astronomical predictions and the calculation of eclipses while maintaining the basic structure. Though limited, the project was still very demanding and necessitated, as Ricci had always maintained, the assistance of numerous specialists.
Longobardo took it upon himself to ask Superior General Acquaviva for reinforcements once again on the same grounds as his predecessor. As he wrote on October 15, 1612, “It is an established fact for us that mathematics will open the way to what we are seeking. . . . We should be able to offer the king philosophy and theology in the shadow of mathematics.”
7
A few months later, fearing that his pleas would be ignored, he dispatched the young French Jesuit Nicolas Trigault, newly assigned to the China mission, to Rome with instructions to illustrate the missionaries’ needs to the Superior General and the pontiff.
Trigault left on February 9, 1613, with Ricci’s portrait
8
and the completed manuscript of his history of the mission. During the journey and his stay in Rome, where he arrived at the end of 1614, the Belgian prepared a Latin version of the original with the addition of seven chapters of his own,
9
two of which were devoted to Ricci’s death and the events connected with his burial and the others to the activities of the residences outside Beijing. This was published under his name in 1615.
10
While Ricci’s original manuscript was left in the archives and forgotten after being handed over to the Jesuit authorities, Trigault’s Latin version enjoyed considerable circulation and was not only translated into French, German, and Spanish but was also retranslated into Italian in 1622.
11
After meeting with the Jesuit authorities in Rome, Trigault traveled through Europe for two years in search of funds as well as scientific books and instruments. He was accompanied on part of his travels by Johann Schreck (1576–1630), known as Terrenz, or Terrentius in Latin, a German Jesuit and eclectic scientist highly esteemed as a physician, botanist, mathematician, and astronomer. Schreck was also the seventh member of the Accademia dei Lincei, which he joined in 1611, just eight days after his friend Galileo and a few months before deciding to enter the Society of Jesus. He met Trigault in 1614 and agreed to follow him to China. Being aware that one of the tasks awaiting him was the reform of the Chinese calendar, he wrote to Galileo from Milan asking for the most recent astronomical tables and some advice on the correct calculation of eclipses. Unquestionably embittered at having been warned not to hold, teach, or defend the Copernican theory by the Jesuit cardinal Roberto Bellarmino on February 26, 1616, the scientist did not reply.
On April 15, 1618, after three years of preparations, Trigault left for China from Lisbon, together with another twenty-two Jesuits assigned to the missions in the East. The five merchant ships were loaded with scientific and astronomical instruments of every type and hundreds of books encompassing the latest developments in Western science.
12
While the astronomical books did not include the work by Copernicus presenting the heliocentric system, which the Church considered heretical, Galileo’s observations of the heavens were discussed in others. Schreck did not forget to take a copy of Galileo’s most recent telescope, a gift from Cardinal Federico Borromeo in Milan that he intended to present to the emperor.
Some of the missionaries died during the voyage or soon after their arrival in Goa, and only eight of the survivors entered China. In addition to Schreck, two of them were the skilled mathematicians that Ricci had requested so many times, namely Giacomo Rho from Milan and the German Johann Adam Schall von Bell. It would be their task to continue at a more highly specialized level the dissemination of Western knowledge begun by the founder of the mission thirty years before.
Scientific Work
While Trigault was in Europe enlisting Jesuit scientists, an edict issued in 1615 by Valentim Carvalho, the Provincial of Japan and China, called the work of the missionaries in China into question once again. Having been forced to move to Macao the previous year as a result of anti-Christian persecution in the Land of the Rising Sun, the Provincial forbade the Jesuits resident in China to teach mathematics and philosophy or to undertake the correction of the calendar. While this decree fortunately had no real effect, as Carvalho left his post soon afterward, the episode showed that not everyone in the order agreed with the approach of the founder of the China mission.
This unpleasant incident was the least of the problems that beset the mission in the years immediately after Ricci’s death, when the Jesuits were faced with the first manifestation of an anti-Christian attitude on the part of the Chinese government in the thirty-plus years of their stay in the Middle Kingdom.
It all began in Nanjing with a series of memorials sent to the court by the vice minister of rites Shen Que in 1616 accusing the Jesuits of being a dangerous influence, turning the people against the government, and leading the literati astray from the Confucian tradition. Xu Guangqi tried to defend his friends with the support of another eminent scholar, namely Yang Tingyun,
13
who had been baptized after Ricci’s death with the name of Michele. The situation grew worse, however, and culminated on February 14, 1617, with the issuing of an imperial edict ordering the Jesuits’ arrest and expulsion from China.
When the anti-Christian persecution finally came to an end in 1623,
14
many things had changed in the China mission. Pantoja died in 1618 and De Ursis two years later without either having been able to return to Beijing. Wanli, the invisible monarch who had helped and protected Ricci, also died in 1620 after forty-seven years on the throne. The new emperor Taichang died of a mysterious illness within a few months—many suspected poisoning—and was followed by Tianqi, who ruled until 1627. His successor, Chongzhen, was to be the last emperor of the Ming dynasty.
With the end of anti-Christian hostilities, the life of the missions slowly returned to normal, and it was possible to resume the work of spreading the Gospel. It was, however, now evident that the Chinese state could react violently if it thought Catholicism was a threat to its stability. The existence of a religion not subordinated to imperial authority was in fact inconceivable.
Johann Adam Schall von Bell and Giacomo Rho were held up in Macao and were involved there in the defense of the city against attack by the Dutch in 1622. Schall moved to Beijing the following year and joined Schreck, who was already there devoting his energies to work in science and astronomy. The German Jesuit immediately demonstrated his skill as an astronomer by accurately predicting the duration of the solar eclipse of September 1624,
15
and Xu Guangqi had his calculations printed in a small volume that he presented to the minister of rites as proof that the new arrivals were ready and able to make a contribution to Chinese astronomy. Published by Schall in 1626, “The Lens That Sees Faraway” was the first book in Chinese about the telescope, described as an “instrument that sharpens the sight and delights the scientist,” and it also presented the astronomical discoveries of Galileo, albeit without mentioning him explicitly by name.
16
After four years of work in the capital, Schall left for Xi’an to join the mission established in the Shaanxi province.
Schreck also devoted himself to scientific work.
17
In addition to writing a medical treatise in 1626 entitled “Western Theories about the Human Body,” which was not published until after his death, he embarked on a meticulous collection and classification of herbs and plants unknown in Europe in order to study their curative properties. He worked with some Chinese collaborators on a mathematical work entitled “Great Measurement,” which presented the most recent developments in trigonometry,
18
and he wrote the treatise “The Explanation and Illustration of Wonderful Instruments” together with Wang Zheng. Published in 1628, this work described machines used to lift and transport heavy objects with an explanation of how they worked based on the principles of geometry. The third Jesuit scientist, Giacomo Rho, who was based in the Shaanxi province, devoted his energies above all to mathematics and writing a book on anatomy and medicine.
The works of the new arrivals joined those that the other missionaries had continued to write after Ricci’s death, combining scientific work with evangelization.
19
Chinese converts were also involved in the production of these volumes by helping the missionaries with their translations, writing prefaces to their works, or providing funds for wood-block printing.
The intense and fruitful period that crowned Ricci’s pioneering efforts culminated in 1628 with the publication of the Jesuits’ twenty most significant works in the
First Collection on the Learning from Heaven
, compiled by Li Zhizao. The term “Learning from Heaven,” considered equivalent to “Western studies,” was used by Chinese intellectuals for the whole of what the missionaries had to impart, placing ethics, religion, science, and engineering all together at the same level. The works in the collection were in fact divided into the two categories of “general principles,” encompassing the ethical and philosophical works, and “concrete phenomena,” regarding the technical and scientific disciplines.
20
The missionaries allowed such different subjects to be presented together under the name of “learning from heaven” because this reflected the combination of science and religion that had always characterized their work of evangelization. For the Jesuits, the heavens were an object of study but also the dwelling place of God, the supreme lawgiver of nature.
21
Li Zhizao explained in his preface to the collection that the writings provided true insight into various sectors of human knowledge, a doctrine that Confucius “would not change if he came [back to life].”
22
The works on “general principles” included Ricci’s
Ten Chapters of an Extraordinary Man
,
Twenty-five Discourses
, and
The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven
. The collection also included a work on the Nestorian Stele, a renowned monument dating from
ad
781 and bearing inscriptions in ancient Chinese and Syriac about the Nestorian religion and the history of the Christian mission in China during the Tang period. On its discovery in Xi’an in 1623, large numbers of Chinese scholars attempted to decipher the Syriac inscriptions with no success until a converted literatus sent Li Zhizao a copy to show to the missionaries. It was Schreck, an expert on Semitic languages, who completed the translation.
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