Matteo Ricci’s literary mission in Late Ming China

Where the title of this literary blogs “books do more than words” is from? What is its meaning? The sentence is a paraphrase of a passage from a letter by Matteo Ricci, the great Jesuit missionary that in the end of 16th century introduced Christianity in China through his preaching, friendship, science, maps, images and… many books. In fact Ricci expressed, more than once, that printed words serve his mission better than spoken words. As someone who has spent many years in studying, teaching and writing about Ricci, I wish I could contribute to the preservation of love and respect for the books, especially of books printed on paper. This heritage might be, in the age of the internet and e-book, dangerously exposed to the risk of extinction. Books and printings are precious: they served as communication tools between two of the greatest human civilizations: European humanistic Renaissance and Ming China.

In China one can do more with books than with [spoken] words

In the kingdom of China, where “letters are very precious, and consequently the sciences and opinions that are founded on reason” (1), Ricci considered writing, printing and disseminating books essential for the success of his mission. This was stated plainly in one of his last letters, written in Beijing on March 8, 1608:

For this purpose, I do everything possible so that all our fathers diligently study the Chinese books and strive to learn to write in Chinese. Because, indeed, although it seems incredible [to many Europeans], in China one can do more with books than with [spoken] words (2).

This conviction was affirmed and articulated in an important letter to Pasio (1609). Ricci said that it was necessary that the missionaries really know the Chinese books, because, for a fruitful apostolate “knowing our own things but not knowing theirs does not help much, and You, Father, will clearly see how important this point is. (3)” Ricci emphasized the importance of books, using an evocative description of “books that talk”:

How easy it is to propagate our holy Christian religion through books. They reach everywhere without impediment. They talk to more people, and continuously say things in a fashion more considerate and accurate than one can say orally (4).

Unlike other countries, where missionaries introduced printing, in China they were able to benefit from the well developed printing industry and book distribution, making it a privileged way of evangelization. I my numerous essay on Ricci, I have proposed a fundamental distinction, among Jesuit religious books, between two genres: the Catechism and the Christian Doctrine. This distinction is based on the binomial notion of Reason and Faith, as the Catechism speaks for Reason and Christian Doctrine speaks for Faith.

In these books we shall find very few matters against the light of reason and very many conformable to it

Ricci did not initiate his mission with a predefined strategy. He learned from accidents, mistakes and from opponents. He took advice from Chinese friends and associates and continued a systematic study of Chinese culture. His strategy and method changed in accordance with what he learned through experience. In this respect he was a humanist of the Renaissance, an early modern pragmatic man. He was devoted to his cause, tenacious in his objectives and flexible in his methods.

When taking up residence in Zhaoqing (September 1583), Matteo Ricci and Michele Ruggieri shaved their heads and dressed in Buddhist-style robes. But Ricci was a man of letters and not a monk or a mystic. He did not act like a Buddhist monk, and he did not feel at ease appearing like one. However many Chinese thought they were indeed Buddhists, and Ricci never felt comfortable wearing that rob. Trained in the realist Aristotelian-thomist tradition, Ricci felt much more at home as a literatus, as a humanist that liked discussion based on reason and rationality.

On April 18, 1595 Ricci abandoned his Buddhist-like habit and wore the silk robes of the literati. After devoting years of studying the Classics, Ricci was finally ready to assume a new role in Chinese society.

Ricci’s missionary method is called “accommodation”, an termed that he also employed a few times. Accommodation method is a concept that has its theological roots in Thomist thought and in Erasmus of Rotterdam. It is a hermeneutical device (Elisabetta Corsi), particularly apt to address complex religious and cultural challenges, and their doctrinal implications.

Many passages in the Chinese classic texts were in harmony with Christian teaching, Ricci said, and he proposed a parallel between the relationship of Christianity with Greco-Roman culture and that of Christianity with Confucianism.

A major piece of evidence of accommodation is the content of his Chinese masterpiece, “The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven” (published in Beijing in 1603):

And so I began a book of matters regarding our faith, all about natural reasons, to be distributed in all of China when it shall be printed (5). This book is not about all the mysteries of our Holy Faith, which must be explained only to catechumens and to Christians: it is rather about the major mysteries, especially those which, in some way, can be proved with natural reason and understood with the natural enlightenment (6).

In The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, Ricci initiated a dialogue with Confucian thought. In 1609, in a letter to Francesco Pasio in Japan, Ricci gave a Christian interpretation of Confucian texts:

By carefully examining all these books, we shall find very few matters against the light of reason and very many conformable to it. … And we can very much hope in the divine mercy that many of their ancestors have been saved by observing the natural law with the help that God shall grant for his goodness (7).

Being a book for all and comprehensible to everyone, The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven was printed in large number of copies, and spread across the country. The copies travelled without the missionaries and reached neighboring nations, including Japan, Korean and Vietnam. Particularly noteworthy is the case of Korea, where Christianity entered thanks to Ricci’s Catechism and other Jesuit books brought back by Korean officials who had taken part in the customary embassies to Beijing.

The best and most useful work that I could have done

Science was part of the Jesuit humanistic and theological vision of the world. Ricci was formed at the Roman College that offered, on those decades, the European most advanced scientific training. He was a pupil of scientists such as Christopher Clavius, who in turned inspired Galileo Galilei. The presentation of Western knowledge to Chinese was meant to elevate Ricci’s prestige and, consequently, the value of his religious doctrine. Introducing himself as scholars of material heaven, he hoped to be trusted as scholar of the metaphysical Heaven as well. Ricci was a teacher of Tianxue, heavenly studies, by which he meant both the astronomy and theology.

Matteo Ricci produced, alone or in collaboration, about thirty books and printed works (such as maps or religious images) in Chinese language. Through his publications he introduced European scientific notions into China from disciplines such as mathematics, astronomy, calendrical calculation, geography, cartography, medicine, physics, architecture, linguistics, phonetics, philosophy, morals, fine arts, music, and, of course, theology. By Ricci was not an agent of cultural and scientific exchange. While he was a great man of science and culture, he considered himself to be a missionary, who wished to introduced the Gospel to the Chinese. For him science and faith were part of the same vision of life.

The modern division, or even the opposition, of theology and science do not belong to late 16th and early 17th centuries. Back then ‘secular’ and ‘sacred’ sciences ware not separated and opposed to each other, but rather part of a unified and coherent curriculum. Astronomy belonged to mathematics; mathematics to philosophy, and philosophy was introductory to theology, the last and highest-ranking of the academic disciplines. Galileo’s saying in The Assayer that ‘The universe cannot be understood without first learning the language and the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language’ (8) shows that mathematics and astronomy were perceived in relation to theology, not in opposition to it.

Ricci’s mapping activity is also one of most known feature of his endeavor. In a previous article in this blog, I have illustrated the vital relationship between image, imagination and the Jesuits. The fruition of images is fundamental in Jesuit training, where imagination played an essential in the process of knowledge, both intellectual and spiritual. The images have the power of conducting the person out of his own world, creating new mental images and, subsequently, a displacement of the self. This exit from the self creates a new space, and allows for an encounter with the other, with the divine.

Ricci adopted sacred images loaded of miraculous power in his preaching; he printed and disseminated images that represented the life of Jesus. He had confidence in their imaginative, evocative and persuasive power. This was by far one of the most innovative features of Ricci activity of in China.

Producing maps, an image that represents the world, enter in the same project and logic. He called the map “the best and most useful work that could have been done at this time to enable China to give credit to the things of our Holy Faith”. Ricci produced six editions of his famous map. Drawing maps of the Earth was not only a tool of missionary strategy, but involved a religious worldview. For the Jesuit cartographer, maps were not only a visual representation of geography, but they are images, icons, of the creation. Ricci produced scientific instrument and images to allow his disciples to know about the universe. Understanding the creation, the Universe and the Earth, with scientific accuracy, meant knowing God and creation. Knowing the Earth and the Universe, and drawing them on maps images; meant participating in the work of creation.

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[1] Matteo Ricci, Lettere. (Macerata: Quodlibet), 2001; 517.

[2] To Superior General Claudio Acquaviva, Beijing, 8 March 1608, in Ricci, Lettere, 470.

[3]Ricci to Pasio, Beijing 15 February 1609, in Ricci, Lettere, 419.

[4] Ibid., 417. 

[5] Ricci to Costa, Shaozhou, 12 October 1594, in Ricci, Lettere, p. 189.

[6] Della entrata della compagnia di Giesù e Christianità nella Cina (On the Entrance of the Society of Jesus and Christianity into China), in Fonti Ricciane: Documenti originali concernenti Matteo Ricci e la storia dell’introduzione del Cristianesimo in Cina, ed. Pasquale M. D’Elia, SJ, 3 vols. (Rome: Libreria dello Stato, 1942–1949); ii, 289–298.

[7] Ricci to Francesco Pasio, Beijing, 15 February 1609, in Ricci, Lettere, 518.

[8] Galileo Galilei, Il Saggiatore (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1965), 38 (translation from Italian by the author).

Gianni Criveller