Authors: Michela Fontana
A pall was cast over the pride the missionaries had in the published collection of their works by Trigault’s suicide in November the same year.
The Reform of the Calendar
The Jesuits did not abandon their hopes of being asked to assist in the reform of the calendar, which they felt sure would come about sooner or later. Having received no reply from Galileo, Schreck addressed his astronomical queries to the German astronomer Johannes Kepler, who sent answers as well as the highly up-to-date Rudolphine Tables in 1627.
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An opportunity to try out Kepler’s suggestions and make use of the new astronomical tables presented itself in 1629, when Chongzhen had been on the throne for a year. A solar eclipse was predicted for June 21, and the Son of Heaven, deeply concerned about the consequences that another mistake on the part of the imperial astronomers might have, asked Schreck and Longobardo to perform the necessary calculations so as to check their results against those of the Chinese and Muslim astronomers. The Jesuits’ data proved more accurate, and Xu Guangqi felt justified by this further demonstration of the effectiveness of Western methods in submitting a proposal once again to undertake reform of the calendar with their aid.
An imperial edict
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issued on September 1, 1629, ordered the creation of a new calendrical office, with Xu Guangqi as its director, to undertake the reform of the Chinese calendar “in accordance with the Western methods.” It was thirty-five years since Minister Wang of Nanjing had first spoken to Matteo Ricci of the possibility of assigning the Jesuits the task of carrying out the astronomical calculations. Li Madou’s dream was becoming reality.
Xu Guangqi asked Schreck to prepare a plan of work together with the now elderly Longobardo, Li Zhizao, and a group of Chinese experts. He drew up a large-scale project for translating the European works brought back by Trigault into Chinese; for writing new treatises on a whole range of subjects including arithmetic, geometry, hydraulics, optics, mechanics, and music; and for the construction of the indispensable scientific equipment for observation and measurement. The plans were solemnly presented to Chongzhen by Xu Guangqi on September 13, 1629.
The work had just begun when Schreck died in 1630, followed shortly afterward by the seventy-five-year-old Li Zhizao, the Jesuits’ precious ally for so long. Rho and Schall were recalled to Beijing to take the missionary’s place. The first translations were presented at court one year later by Xu Guangqi, who had meanwhile been appointed minister of rites and then grand secretary and tutor to the heir to the throne. The Jesuits’ satisfaction at the presence of such an authoritative and illustrious convert at the very top of the government ladder was short-lived, however, as Xu Guangqi fell ill and died on November 8, 1633, at the age of seventy-one. Paul Xu had always done his utmost for the Jesuit cause with devotion and friendship and without ever deviating from fidelity to the Confucian system of values. The cycle begun by Matteo Ricci came to a close with his death.
The Western astronomical office continued to operate under the guidance of Li Tianjing, a scholar designated by Xu Guangqi before his death. Even though the new director was not a convert and lacked the authority of his predecessor in coping with the inevitable disputes aroused by the Jesuits’ work,
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the studies, research, and translation continued, and the new works were presented to the court at regular intervals. The Son of Heaven received a telescope as a gift in 1634 and was so impressed that he asked for more of those instruments immediately.
The huge project was completed by the end of 1636: an encyclopedia of Western knowledge in 137 volumes entitled
Chongzhen lishu
(“Writings on the Calendar from the Chongzhen Reign”) and containing Chinese translations of European works, new works in Mandarin written by the Jesuits and Xu Guangqi together with a group of Chinese assistants, and two celestial atlases. In addition to Schreck’s book on trigonometry, the mathematics section included a dozen works by Rho, one of which, entitled “Calculus,” presented logarithms—a major innovation of sixteenth-century European mathematics and an indispensable tool for the simplification of astronomical calculations—for the first time in China.
The cosmological works in the astronomy section offered the Chinese a description of the universe differing from the geocentric Ptolemaic system that Ricci had presented to them. In European science, despite the Church’s opposition to the heliocentric system and Galileo’s forced recantation in 1633, the Copernican revolution was sweeping the Ptolemaic vision of the world away forever. Being well aware of the most recent developments in astronomy but unable to embrace the Copernican system, the missionaries of the new generation presented to the Chinese the model of the universe devised in the second half of the sixteenth century by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, an elegant compromise between the heliocentric and geocentric systems accepted temporarily in the West because of its compatibility with the dictates of religious authorities. According to Brahe, the earth remained at the center of the universe with the sun rotating around it and the planets rotating in turn around the sun. The Jesuits continued to put this system forward even after it had been discarded in Europe in favor of the Copernican system, which was not presented in China until 1760, a century later, by the French Jesuit Michel Benoist.
The adoption of an incorrect cosmological system such as Brahe’s model had no effect on the validity of the calculations performed for the calendar, as demonstrated by the fact that the Chinese had produced excellent calendars in the past without employing any geometric model of the solar system.
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The superiority of the Jesuits’ predictions was due to the use of more advanced astronomical tables, methods of calculation, and instruments of observation. And the effectiveness of the “Western methods” was confirmed every time they were challenged by the Jesuits’ adversaries.
At the same time, the authority that was gained through the formidable feat of cultural transmission facilitated the work of evangelization, and the missions flourished. Even though the converts numbered no more than a few thousand, there were now sixteen Jesuit residences scattered throughout Chinese territory, including one in Xu Guangqi’s hometown Shanghai. Christianity also obtained a foothold inside the Forbidden City thanks to Schall, who succeeded in converting dozens of eunuchs and ladies of the court. Now enjoying a position at court that was at least equal to Ricci’s, the German Jesuit even succeeded in repairing the harpsichord given by his predecessor to Wanli, which had been rediscovered in the imperial apartments after so many years. Chongzhen was so pleased with the success of the Western methods in reforming the calendar that he bestowed the inscription “Imperial Praise on the Learning from Heaven” on Rho and Schall. Rho died in 1638 at the age of just forty-five, and it was Schall, the most long-lived of the three Jesuit mathematicians that had arrived from Europe twenty years earlier with Trigault, who continued the work of the astronomical office and the dissemination of scientific knowledge pioneered by Ricci.
The End of the Ming Dynasty
While Ricci’s heirs were altering the physiognomy of the China mission, the Ming empire, already worn out by economic and political problems, was on the verge of collapse. The most serious threat was from the northeast, where the Manchu tribes, unified by Nurhaci in the early years of the seventeenth century, had become stronger and battle hardened.
The danger from outside was combined with the internal threat of peasant revolts unleashed from the 1620s in the northern region of the empire, especially in the Shaanxi province. A rebel leader named Li Zicheng conquered Xi’an in 1643 and marched on Beijing. Incapable of organizing any resistance, Chongzhen hanged himself from a tree on the Jingshan Hill behind the imperial palace, thus bringing the Ming dynasty to an end after 276 years of power.
The rebellious peasants were unable to consolidate their gains, however, because the Chinese general Wu Sangui, in charge of the Ming imperial troops in the northeast, formed an alliance with the Manchu and succeeded in defeating Li Zicheng. Having established themselves in Beijing, the Manchu invaders proclaimed the new Qing, or “Pure,” dynasty in 1644 and succeeded in regaining control of the entire territory within a few years.
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The child emperor Shunzhi took the throne, and the regent Dorgon implemented a policy of stabilization so as to facilitate transition to the new dynastic order. Even though the Manchu were foreigners, the Qing dynasty was not totally barbarian because Chinese influence in Manchuria had partly sinicized the tribes, and the conquest of China itself had taken place with the assent of many of the Chinese military leaders involved in the wars against the rebels. The majority of the Ming bureaucrats therefore sided with the victors.
The advent of the new dynasty was relatively painless for the Jesuits, even though Schall had enabled the Ming troops to obtain Portuguese cannons from Macao to fight the Manchu invaders during the conflict and had himself helped the Chinese to construct a foundry in 1642 and to cast and test about twenty cannons, whose functioning he described in a treatise on military techniques.
Needing to consolidate their power and therefore wishing to introduce an accurate calendar as an unmistakable sign of their harmony with Heaven, the new rulers realized that the Jesuits’ astronomical skills constituted a precious asset that it would be foolish to relinquish. The regent Dorgon offered to appoint Schall director of the astronomical office, one of the most important posts in the imperial bureaucracy. The Jesuit hesitated for a long time over this extraordinary proposal, which would place him in a wholly unprecedented position for a missionary, but he was finally persuaded to accept by the insistent recommendations of Francisco Furtado,
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the superior in charge of the Jesuit residences in northern China. His appointment was the highest mark of recognition ever obtained by the Jesuits in China and crowned the pioneering efforts of Matteo Ricci thirty-four years after his death.
Schall reorganized the office and closed down the Muslim observatory. Predictions were henceforth to be made solely in accordance with the “new rules,” as the Chinese called the Western methods. Unlike Ricci, who had never been able to meet Wanli, Schall succeeded in establishing a very close and personal relationship with the young Son of Heaven.
The emperor was very grateful to the Jesuit for his work at the astronomical office and bestowed many honors upon him, including the title of “master who understands the mysteries” and the honorary qualification of bureaucrat of the first rank in 1658. With his approval, Schall built a new residence for the missionaries in Beijing and a new church, later known as the “southern church.” The work of evangelization continued in the meantime, and the number of converts rose to some tens of thousands, still a very modest figure in view of the fact that the empire had a population of about 250 million. Zhang Weixin,
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the first Chinese Jesuit, was ordained in Rome a few years later in 1664.
As historians have established, progress in evangelization was achieved above all among the lower classes, with no more conversions of illustrious literati and leading bureaucrats being obtained after the first two decades of the seventeenth century. Moreover, the widespread sympathy and curiosity shown by unconverted intellectuals for the “learning from heaven” until the collapse of the Ming dynasty gave way in the Manchu era to a sharper awareness of the radical difference between the Jesuit and Chinese visions of the world. Partly for his own ends but also out of sincere conviction, Ricci had endeavored to identify similarities between Confucian and Christian conceptions, interpreting the former in relation to the spreading of the Gospel and using the dissemination of science to pave the way for religious instruction. With the passing of time, however, Chinese intellectuals realized that the superficial parallels between Chinese and Catholic ethics concealed fundamental differences.
At the same time, the members of the bureaucracy began to fear that Catholicism might undermine the foundations of the Chinese state, where no form of power not subordinate to imperial authority was permissible, not even one of a religious character. The acknowledged value of the teaching of Western science was also kept within precise limits. As Jacques Gernet writes, it became normal in the Manchu era to divide the missionaries’ teaching into two parts, namely the scientific and technical, which was to be preserved, and everything connected with religion, which was to be banned. This concept was expressed early in the eighteenth century by one of the compilers of a remarkable Chinese bibliography. Citing the collection of missionaries’ works published by Li Zhizao in 1628 in a note, he comments as follows: “The superiority of Western teachings lies in calculations, their inferiority in the worship of a Lord of Heaven, which tends to disturb people.”
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The loss of sympathy on the part of Chinese intellectuals seems to be demonstrated by the sharp decline as from 1616 in the number of laudatory introductions written for works published by Jesuit missionaries.
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The attitude of the literati had no influence, however, on the esteem the Jesuits enjoyed at court, where they were held in great consideration above all as foreign experts.
Despite the increase in the number of converts and the important position established in the imperial court, Schall was as significant as he was controversial and found bitter opponents within the Jesuit order.
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One of the charges laid against him regarded his acceptance of the post of director of the calendrical office. Since the astronomical calendar was published together with the almanac of auspicious and inauspicious days, his critics accused him of endorsing Chinese superstitions instead of combating them, which was inadmissible for a Jesuit. The heated disputes on this subject, which continued until the death of the German missionary, were also addressed by several boards of theologians, and the religious authorities decided in 1664 that Schall would be permitted to retain his position on condition that he worked exclusively on the astronomical part of the calendar.