De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas
Paulum V. In Quibus Sinensis Regni mores, leges, atque instituta, & novae illius Ecclesiae difficillima primordia accurate & summa fide describuntur ("The Christian Expedition among the Chinese undertaken by the Society of Jesus from the commentaries of Fr.
Matteo Ricci of the same Society... in which the customs, laws, and principles of the Chinese kingdom and the most difficult first beginnings of the new Church there are accurately and with great fidelity described / authored by Fr.
Other tasks interfered during the overland section of his westward journey to Europe (via the Persian Gulf, Persia, and Egypt) and his negotiations with the Jesuit leaders in Rome; but he managed to complete his work by 1615, when the book was published in Augsburg in 645 pages, plus introductory and index material.
[9] A complete English translation of the Latin text, by the Jesuit Louis J. Gallagher was published in the US in 1942, with the preface and imprimatur of the Archbishop of Boston Richard Cushing.
Book One is encyclopedic overview of the late-Ming China as seen by Ricci during his 27 years of living in the country, interacting with people of all walks of life, and reading Chinese literature.
He talks about its industry and agriculture, explaining the use of bamboo,[10] coal mining and distribution system,[10] tea production and drinking,[11] and the lacquer technology.
[15] He concludes his generally appreciative description of China's material culture with the thought, "One may gather from what has been said that there are numerous points of advantageous contacts between ourselves and the Chinese people.
[19] He notes that unlike European monarchies of the day, the Ming Empire prohibited all male relatives of the emperor from occupying any official post or even from leaving their fiefs without permission,[20] and greatly disapproves the use of eunuchs, "a meager looking class, uneducated and brought up in perpetual slavery, a dull and stolid lot", in the administration of the state.
[21] Ricci finds it "a source of regret that [the Chinese] do not get rid themselves" of the complicated and time-consuming ceremonies used to express relations between superiors and inferiors or even between friends.
He disparages Buddhism[23] and Taoism[24] as an "unnatural and hideous fiction of idol worship"[25] but views the teaching of Confucius as moral, rather than religious, in nature and perfectly compatible with or even complementary to Christianity.
[26] Ricci refers to Chinese Buddhism as the "sect... known as Sciequia [釋迦牟尼, Shijiamouni, Shakyamuni] or Omitose [阿彌陀佛, Amituo Fo, Amitābha]", and is aware of it being brought from India, supposedly after an emperor had a prophetic dream in 65 AD.
[27] Ricci explains the similarities by hypothesizing Christian influence on Buddhism, as transmitted by Indians to Chinese in 1st century AD, in particular because of the preaching of Bartholomew the Apostle in northern India.
That belief, as Ricci himself explained, was based on the observation that the Portuguese bought a lot of mercury in China, exported it and brought silver back into the country.
