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Jesuit Letters From China, 1583-84 (Paperback, Minnesota Archive Editions Ed.)
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Jesuit Letters From China, 1583-84 (Paperback, Minnesota Archive Editions Ed.)
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Jesuit Letters From China, 1583-84 was first published in 1986.
Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make
long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published
unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.
The first eight letters from Jesuit missionaries on mainland China
were written in 1583-84 and published in Europe in 1586. M Howard
Rienstra's translated marks their first appearance in English. The
letters chronicle the patient efforts of Michele Ruggieri and the
famed Matteo Ricci to learn Chinese, to gain acceptance in Chinese
society, and to explain Christianity to a highly sophisticated
non-Christian culture. They also described the China of the late
Ming dynasty (1368-1644), a country whose immense size and
population had excited the imagination of Europeans for
generations. It was Francis Xavier's dream that this mighty kingdom
and civilization be opened to the Christian gospel. His dream was
at least tentatively fulfilled when Michele Ruggieri was granted
residence first in Canton and then in Chao-ch'ing in 1583.
Accompanied first by Francesco Pasio and later by Matteo Ricci,
Ruggieri initiated the Christian mission in China. Their letters,
published initially as an appendix to a volume of Jesuit letters
from Japan, were abbreviated and censored by their European editor.
In edited form, the letters appeared in 1586 in one French, on
German, and three Italian editions. The China of Ruggieri and
Matteo Ricci had remained, however, both suspicious of, and closed
to, foreigners - a fact which the original letters do not gloss
over. Rienstra was carefully compared the abbreviated and censored
versions of these letters in their originals, still preserved in
the Jesuit archives in Rome. The letters in general indicate how
tenuous the Jesuits' situation was and note candidly that only two
baptisms had been performed on the mainland during their stay.
These results stand in marked contracts to the reports from Japan
of tens of thousands of baptisms and to the reports from Portuguese
Macao, where Chinese converts were compelled to wear European
cloths and to take European names. Such Europeanization was thought
to be inappropriate to a successful Christian mission in China.
Though criticized at the time by their colleagues in Macao,
Ruggieri, Pasio, and Ricci committed themselves to a program of
cultural respect and accommodation. They learned both written and
spoken Chinese, ingratiated themselves with the ruling classes by
exhibiting their learning and courtesy, and appeared to have become
Chinese themselves. When Matteo Ricci became Ruggieri's successor
and his name became synonymous with the success of the Jesuit
mission in China, it was to these methods that its success was
owed. Unfortunately, the prevailing European ethnocentrism could
not accept the concept of cultural accommodation. The editors thus
censored the letters to convey the impression of a triumphant and
culturally superior Christian mission in China. Jesuit Letters From
China is a publication of the James Ford Bell Library at the
University of Minnesota.
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