François Noël (missionary)

[1] He joined the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) at the age of nineteen on 30 September 1670 in Tournai,[1] which had just been returned to France from the Spanish Netherlands two years before under the terms of the War of Devolution's Treaty of Aachen.

[7] On 9 November 1701,[8] he was selected—probably through the influence of his compatriot, the Vice Provincial Superior Antoine Thomas[1][b]—to act as the procurator for the China mission in an embassy concerning the Chinese Rites Controversy.

Visdelou, meanwhile, was delayed first owing to reticence by the French mission to allow him to leave and then under various pretexts because the visitor Carlo Turcotti (correctly) suspected his position on the question of the rites.

[11] After a 43 day wait on Saint Helena owing to fear of a new European war, the ship passed through two storms to the Azores and through a collision off Calais to London, which it reached on 4 October.

[12] On the 14th, they gave Fabroni the first round of documents: an overview, a dossier of verified testimony, books by De Rocha and Alenio, and a 1664 anti-Christian pamphlet by Yang Guangxian whose complaints proved that the Jesuits were mentioning Jesus's crucifixion to the Chinese.

[12] The Franciscan Giovanni Francesco Nicolai da Leonessa had been opposing them before their arrival; on 10 March he was joined by the MEP missionary Artus de Lionne.

[13] Instead, despite the pope's kind words,[14] the decision had already been reached well ahead of its formal proclamation: Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon had been named legate for China and the East Indies on 5 December 1701 with the specific instructions to disallow further practice of Chinese rituals by Christians there;[15][16] he was given papal-like supremacy over the clerics there and, on the 27th, consecrated as the titular patriarch of Antioch,[15] making him the notional head of the churches across most of Asia.

He left for the Qing Empire aboard the French ship Maurepas on 9 February 1703, only weeks after Noël's arrival, and disallowed the Jesuit leniency towards to the Malabar rites while he waited out the monsoon season in Pondicherry.

[14] On 20 November Pope Clement XI's decree Cum Deus Optimus... ruled almost completely against the Jesuits,[17] formalizing a ban on both the rites and further discussion of the topic.

[18] Noël returned east in 1706, traveling—at Castner's insistence—not via Goa and through the Straits of Malacca but around Timor; this route proved faster and subsequently became standard for journeys between Europe and Macao.

[21] His first imperial audience the same month had been diplomatic and held out hope for permanent relations between China and the Papal States;[20] his second, on 29 June 1706, had found the emperor displeased that any controversy had arisen over the Jesuits' accommodation of rites he had personally verified as secular[22] and, in any case, necessary for Chinese society.

[23] Tournon—still generally uninformed on the details of the situation[20] — had deferred to the "great expert" Maigrot, whose analysis had prompted Rome's reversal, and the emperor agreed to receive him at the new summer palace at Rehe (now Chengde).

[32] At the emperor's insistence, a second embassy was dispatched to Rome to overturn Cum Deus Optimus... and Maigrot and Tournon's various rulings in 1706; this was apparently lost at sea.

)[17] Noël departed for Europe from Macao on 14 January 1708 on the Portuguese ship Bom Jesus de Mazagão das Brotas with the Jesuits José Ramón Arxó and António Francesco Giuseppe Provana and the Chinese convert Louis Fan.

[41] It seems likely that its claimed papal imprimatur was that which Clement had granted to publish findings before his 1704 decision;[41] on 19 March 1715, he issued the bull Ex Illa Die... repeating in stronger terms his condemnations and the incompatibility of Chinese ritual with Catholicism.

[45] The Jesuits initially focused on translating Confucian classics, rather than Buddhist scriptures or the Taoist canon, because of its greater importance in Chinese officialdom under the Ming and Qing.

[44] The works of Mencius were not originally translated because Matteo Ricci disliked Mencian interpretations of the other classic texts, particularly his strong condemnation of celibacy as unfilial.

[46] Noël published his Six Classic Books of the Chinese Empire (Sinensis Imperii Libri Classici Sex) at the same press the next year,[37] although his manuscripts show he had been working on them since at least 1700.

[55] Unlike earlier Jesuit works, it does not claim that the Neo-Confucianism of Zhu Xi and others was a Buddhist corruption of Confucianism; it treats it as an organic development although still cautioning that its vague terms should not be used in reference to the Christian God.

[57] Its four parts comprise a Life of Jesus Christ under the Name of Divine Love (Vita Jesu Christi sub Nomine Divini Amoris);[58] Marian Letters (Epistolae Marianae);[59] a Life of St Ignatius of Loyola, Founder of the Jesuits (Vita Sancti Ignatii de Loyola Societatis Jesu Fundatoris);[60] and several tragedies (Tragoediae), including Philotas,[61] Herod (Herodes),[62] Love (Amor),[63] Lucifer,[64] Accianus,[65] and Henry (Henricus).