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The Chinese Rites Controversy: Confucian and Christian Views on the Afterlife

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Paul Rule
Paul Rule*
Affiliation:
La Trobe University, Melbourne / Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History, University of San Francisco
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Extract

The Chinese Rites Controversy is a question that is as much ecclesiastical or missiological as sinological, and the researcher, therefore, has to attempt to embrace two very complex and demanding fields. It was, of course, an argument about cross-cultural understanding (and misunderstanding), and the peculiarities of Chinese religion and language; and an episode in the fraught historical relations between China and the West. But the controversy itself was ecclesiastical, among ecclesiastics, and it was the papacy and its offices which determined the outcome.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 45: The Church, the Afterlife and the Fate of the Soul , 2009 , pp. 280 - 300
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2009

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References

1 The writer’s current major research projects fortuitously straddle the two. The first is a multi-volume history of the Chinese Rites Controversy, which has been conducted under the auspices of the Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History at the University of San Francisco, which has a unique collection of manuscripts, copies of archival material and rare books collected by Francis Rouleau, SJ, and augmented by the founding Director, Edward Malatesta, SJ. I am also editing for the Macau Ricci Institute an English translation of the most important document of the Chinese Rites Controversy, the Acta Pekinensia, a Latin account, running to nearly 1,500 pages, of the activities in China from 1705 to 1710 of the papal legate, Charles Maillard de Tournon. A preliminary account of the controversy is to be found in Rule, Paul A., K’ung-tzu or Confucius? The Jesuit Interpretation of Confucianism (Sydney, 1986)Google Scholar, chs 2–3.

2 See Zürcher, E., The Buddhist Conquest of China, 2 vols (Leiden, 1959).Google Scholar

3 The best history of this remains Groot, J. J. M. de, Sectarianism and Religious Persecution in China: A Page in the History of Religions, 2 vols (Leyden, 1901, repr. Taipei, 1963)Google Scholar. While somewhat overstated, the documentation provides a devastating rebuttal of alleged Chinese tolerance.

4 See Zürcher, Erik, ‘The Jesuit Mission in Fukien in Late Ming Times: Levels of Response’, in Vermeer, E. B., ed., Development and Decline of Fukien Province in the 17th and 18th Centuries (Leiden, 1990), 417–57 Google Scholar, and, in this volume, Swanson, R. N., ‘Ghosts and Ghostbusters in the Middle Ages’, 143–73.Google Scholar

5 A major source for this is the record of the ‘daily conversations’ between Jesuit missionaries in Fuzhou and a large number of scholars, Christian and non-Christian, between 1630 and 1640, entitled Kouduo richao. An annotated English translation edited by Zürcher, Erik has recently been published: Kouduo richao. Li jiubiao’s Diary of Oral Admonitions. A Late Ming Christian Journal, Monumenta Serica Monographs, 2 vols (Nettetal, 2007).Google Scholar

6 On this form of Eastern Christianity, often misnamed ‘Nestorian’, introduced in the seventh century, see Malek, Roman, ed., The Chinese Face of Jesus Christ, Volume 1 (Sankt Augustin, 2002)Google Scholar, Part One.

7 The Analects of Confucius (Lun Yu) 12: 1. ‘Ritual’ here is li in Chinese, a term with a semantic range far beyond liturgy or religious performance. It embraces all forms of correct social behaviour.

8 Ricci, M., Storia dell’introduzione del Cristianesimo in Cina, in Ricciane, Fonti, ed. D’Elia, P. M., 3 vols (Roma, 1942), 1: 40 Google Scholar (paragraph N55).

9 The term politicus in Latin embraced not just politics and government as in our usage, but the ‘polite’, correct behaviour.

10 Despite the recent claim of Jensen, Lionel in Manufacturing Confucianism (Durham, 1997)Google Scholar, the Jesuits never used the term ‘Confucianism’, a nineteenth-century neologism.

11 See D’Elia, , ed., Fonti Ricciane, 1: 115–16 Google Scholar (paragraph N176).

12 See Neville, R. C., Boston Confucianism (Albany, NY, 2000)Google Scholar. Tu Wei-ming is perhaps the best known of the ‘Boston Confucians’, who argue for the religious nature of Confu cianism, including Neo-Confucianism, and for its continuing relevance to modern society.

13 D’Elia, , ed., Fonti Ricciane, 1:116 Google Scholar (paragraph N176).

14 For example, in Needham, Joseph, Science and Civilisation in China, 2: History of Scientific Thought (Cambridge, 1956), 500 Google Scholar; and recently Elman, Benjamin, On their Own Terms (Cambridge, MA, 2005), 161 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This interpretation goes back as far as Antonio de Santa Maria, who in his letter to Propaganda Fide accompanying the treatise says ‘there it will be seen whether or not the Chinese sacrifice to Confucius and their dead ancestors’: Margiotti, Fortunato, Relationes et Epistolas Fratrum Minorimi Hispanorum in Sinis qui a. 1697–1698 Missionum Ingressi Sunt, eds Han, Gaspar and Abad, Antolin, Sinica Franciscana 9/2 (Madrid, 1995), 986.Google Scholar

15 Tianshen (‘heavenly spirit’) was the term commonly used for angels.

16 Linghun is one of many terms roughly corresponding to the Western notion of’soul’.

17 ‘Reposta breve …’, Rome, Historical Archives of the Congregation ‘De Propaganda Fide’ (now the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples), Scritture Referite nei Congressi, Indie Orientali e Cina, Vol. 1 (1623–1674), fols 145–68.

18 Tratados historicos, politicos, ethicos, y religiosos de la monarchia de China (Madrid, 1676)Google Scholar, especially ‘Repuesta Breve’, 246–89.

19 Traité sur quelques points de la religion des Chinois (Paris, 1701)Google Scholar; it was reprinted with critical annotations by Leibniz, in his Opera Omnia, ed. Dutens, L. (Geneva, 1768), 4: 89–144 Google Scholar; and an English translation, ‘A short answer concerning the controversy about Xang Ti, Tien Xim, and Ling Hoen…’, is to be found in Navarrete, An Account of the Empire of China, (n. pl., n. d.; probably from Churchill’s Voyages, 1704), Book V, 183–224.

20 Demiéville, Paul, ‘The First Philosophical Contacts between China and Europe’, Diogenes 58 (1967), 75–103, at 94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Gernet, Jacques, China and the Christian Impact (Cambridge, 1985), 203.Google Scholar

22 See the index to China and the Christian Impact, where under ‘materialism’ Gernet has ‘see also idolatry’ and under ‘idolatry’, ‘see also materialism’.

23 ‘Short Answer’, 206 (I will generally refer thus to the 1704 English edition which appears in the Account of the Empire of China, 183–224, under the title of ‘A short answer concerning the controversies about Xang Ti, Tien Xin, and Ling Hoen …’); cf. Navarrete, , Tratados, 270.Google Scholar

24 ‘Short Answer’, 210; cf. Navarrete, , Tratados, 274.Google Scholar

25 Leibniz’s commentary on this is very shrewd. He seems to have found this talk of ‘air’ nonsensical and refuses to accept that this is the Chinese view. ‘Tout le contraire’, he wrote in the margin (Opera, ed. Dutens, 4: 125 n. 81). On an earlier mention of’air’ Leibniz pointed out that in European thought ‘spirit’ is analogously labelled ‘air’ (Greek pneuma / Latin spiritus). This led him to ask why the term qi should not be similarly metaphorical: ibid. 4: 116 n. 61.

26 ‘Short Answer’, 210; cf. Navarrete, , Tratados, 274.Google Scholar

27 Ibid.

28 ‘Short Answer’, 207 n. 1.

29 Leibniz, , Opera, ed. Dutens, , 4: 120 n. 73: ‘On les accuse donc à tort d’invoquer les faux Dieux.’Google Scholar

30 The best general history of the early missions of the Dominicans in China is Biermann, Benno, Die Anfänge der neueren Dominikermission im China (Münster in Westfalen, 1927)Google Scholar. On the Franciscans there is the continuing series of published letters and relations, Sinica Franciscana, 10 vols so far (various places, 1929 onwards). The best work on the Spanish Franciscans and the Chinese rites remains Margiotti, F., ‘L’atteggiamento dei Francescani spagnoli nella questione dei riti cinesi’, Archivo Ibero-Americano 38 (1978), 125–80.Google Scholar

31 See Cummins, J. S., ‘Two Missionary Methods in China: Mendicants and Jesuits’, Archivo Ibero-Americano 38 (1978), 33–108 Google Scholar, repr. in idem, Jesuit and Friar in the Spanish Expansion to the East (London, 1986)Google Scholar, ch. 5.

32 A misconception spread by Rowbotham, Arnold in his pioneering work Missionary and Mandarin: The Jesuits at the Court of China (Berkeley, CA, 1942)Google Scholar. Very few of the ‘Court Jesuits’, or Patres Pekinenses as they called themselves, even those who actually worked for the emperor, were formally ‘mandarins’, i.e. holders of official positions. See my paper, ‘Kangxi and the Jesuits: Missed Opportunity or Futile Hope?’ (Dixième colloque international Ricci de sinologie, Paris, 6–8 septembre 2004), forthcoming in a volume edited by Michel Cartier.

33 The whole passage from Aduarte, , Historia de la Provincia del Santo Rosario de la Orden de Predicadores en Philippinas, Japon, y China (Manila, 1640), 1: 255ff Google Scholar, is given in Bierniann, , Die Anfänge, 44–45 n. 61.Google Scholar

34 Presumably ji, the usual word for a ritual in which offerings of food, wine etc. are made.

35 The Spanish reads: ‘Padre, esta letra significa sacrificar, y explica lo mismo que vosostros haceis en la misa.’

36 He had taught theology and worked with Japanese lepers in Manila with a view to trying to enter the now closed Japan.

37 Daban culto, a highly prejudicial term given the implications of cultus in scholastic theology. Again what did they say in Chinese without begging the question of the meaning of expressions likey’ji?

38 Suntuosos templos, again assuming they are ‘temples’ like Buddhist and Daoist temples. In South China there are often elaborate clan ancestral halls, unlike North China where the rituals are performed in domestic family shrines.

39 There was probably a misunderstanding here over precisely which ancestor rituals were being discussed: domestic rituals or large public rituals in the clan citang which the Jesuits advised avoiding because of superstitious actions such as burning paper money on the part of non-Christian relatives.

40 Cortesia politica.

41 Margiotti, , ‘L’Atteggiamento’, 134.Google Scholar

42 Francesco de la Madre de Dios Bermudez de la Almeida, to give him his full name.

43 Furtado, Francisco, the Jesuit Vice-Provincial, in a reply to the friars written in 1640 but published only in 1700 as Informatio Antiquissima de Praxi Missionariorum Sinensium Societatis…, 2nd edn (Paris, 1700), 30–31.Google Scholar

44 See Christian, William A. Jr, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (Princeton, NJ, 1981)Google Scholar; Delumeau, Jean, Catholicism between Luther and Voltaire: A New View of the Counter-Reformation (London, 1977).Google Scholar

45 See the treatments in Sullivan, Francis A., Salvation Outside the Church? (New York, 1992)Google Scholar of St Thomas’s views (47–62) and of the liberal opinions of the Salamanca Dominicans Francisco de Vitoria, Melchior Cano and Domingo Soto (69–76); also Muldoon, James, Popes, Lawyers, and Infidels: The Church and the Non-Christian World 1250–1550 (Philadelphia, PA, 1979).Google Scholar

46 See Baudin, Emile, Études historiques et critiques sur la philosophie de Pascal, tome 2 (Neuchätel, 1946)Google Scholar, on the ‘thomisme réaugustiné’ of theologians like John of St Thomas, Domingo Bañez and Thomas de Lemos.

47 Morales to Propaganda Fide, Manila, 15 October 1648; Rome, Historical Archives of the Congregation ‘de Propaganda Fide’, Scritture Originali riferite nelle Congregazioni Generali: Informationum Libri, Lib. 193:India,China,Japonia, 1652 ad 1654, fols 112v, 113r.

48 For a more detailed treatment of the Roman dimension of the question, see George Minamiki, SJ, The Chinese Riles Controversy from its Beginning to Modern Times (Chicago, IL, 1985).Google Scholar

49 My translation from the Latin text in Launay, Adrien, Documents historiques relatifs à la Société des missions étrangères (Vannes, 1905), 33.Google Scholar

50 Kangxi was the reign title of the Emperor, whose personal name Xuanye was taboo.

51 Hay, Malcolm, Failure in the Far East (London, 1956).Google Scholar

52 His letters to the superiors of the Société des Missions Étrangères (in Launay, , Documents, 1: 248–83 Google Scholar) show him selling copies of secret correspondence to Paris.

53 Much of this unpublished material is in the Jap. Sin. collection of the Jesuit Archives in Rome. Some of the more formal treatises have been published in Standaert, Nicholas and Dudink, Adrian, eds, Chinese Christian Texts from the Roman Archives of the Society of Jesus, 12 vols (Taipei, 2002).Google Scholar

54 Brevis Reiatio eorum quae spectant ad declarationem Sinarum Imperatoris Kam Hi, circa coeli, Cumfucii et eorum cultum, datam anno 1700. Accedunt primatum doctissimorumque virorum et antiquissimae traditionis testimonia. Opera Patrum Soc. Jesu Pekini pro Evangelii propagatione laborantium, xylograph [Beijing, 1701].

55 Castner’s ‘Diarium’ for 9 December 1704, ‘Diarium Actorum circa Controversias de ritibus Sinicis’; Rome, Archivum Historicum Societatis Jesu, Fondo Gesuitico, 724, reg. 2, fol. 12V.

56 Ceyssens, Lucien, in ‘Autour de l’Unigenitus: Le pape Clément XI’, Bulletin de l’Institut historique belge de Rome 53–54 (1983-84), 253–304 Google Scholar, writes of’le caractère mensonger de Clément XI’ (279) and notes a contemporary judgement that ‘chez Albani le oui et le non ne sont pas très distinct l’un de l’autre’ (261).

57 The work of Kilian Stumpf, SJ, it is found as Jap. Sin. 138 in the Jesuit Roman Archives. An annotated English translation is currently being prepared by the Macau Ricci Institute. The mostly undocumented commentary that follows is based on this work and the huge volume of contemporary documentation too vast to be noted here. Partial listings are given in the Bibliotheca Missionum (Freiburg / Rome, 1916–1964), esp. vols 5 and 7, and Cordier, Henri, Bibliotheca Sinica (Paris, 1904-1924)Google Scholar, esp. cols 869–926, 3580–3600.

58 Such as Rosso, Antonio Sisto, Apostolic Delegations to China of the Eighteenth Century (South Pasadena, CA, 1948).Google Scholar