Jesuit missions in China

The first attempt by the Jesuits to reach China was made in 1552 by St. Francis Xavier, Navarrese priest and missionary and founding member of the Society of Jesus.

At the time of their peak influence, members of the Jesuit delegation were considered some of the emperor's most valued and trusted advisors, holding prestigious posts in the imperial government.

[citation needed] According to research by David E. Mungello, from 1552 (i.e., the death of St. Francis Xavier) to 1800, a total of 920 Jesuits participated in the China mission, of whom 314 were Portuguese, and 130 were French.

Fairly soon after the establishment of the direct European maritime contact with China (1513) and the creation of the Society of Jesus (1540), at least some Chinese became involved with the Jesuit effort.

However, Xavier failed to find a way to enter the Chinese mainland, and died in 1552 on Shangchuan island off the coast of Guangdong,[5] the only place in China where Europeans were allowed to stay at the time, albeit only for seasonal trade.

A few years after Xavier's death, the Portuguese were allowed to establish Macau, a semi-permanent settlement on the mainland which was about 100 km closer to the Pearl River Delta than Shangchuan Island.

A number of Jesuits visited the place (as well as the main Chinese port in the region, Guangzhou) on occasion, and in 1563 the Order permanently established its settlement in the small Portuguese colony.

[6] A new regional manager ("Visitor") of the order, Alessandro Valignano, on his visit to Macau in 1578–1579 realized that Jesuits would not get far in China without a sound grounding in the language and culture of the country.

This level of commitment was necessitated by logistical reasons: Travel from Europe to China took many months, sometimes years; and learning the country's language and culture was even more time-consuming.

While some Jesuit fathers managed to impress Qing commanders with a display of western science or ecclesiastical finery and to be politely invited to join the new order (as did Johann Adam Schall von Bell in Beijing in 1644, or Martino Martini in Wenzhou ca.

During the several years of war between the Qing and the Southern Ming dynasties, it was not uncommon for some Jesuits to find themselves on different sides of the front lines: while Adam Schall was an important counselor of the Qing Shunzhi Emperor in Beijing, Michał Boym travelled from the jungles of south-western China to Rome, carrying the plea of help from the court of the Yongli Emperor of the Southern Ming, and returned with the Pope's response that promised prayer, after some military assistance from Macau.

[21] Prior to the Jesuits, there had already been Chinese pilgrims who had made the journey westward, with two notable examples being Rabban bar Sauma and his younger companion, who became Patriarch Mar Yaballaha III, in the 13th century.

"Jesuits were accepted in late Ming court circles as foreign literati, regarded as impressive especially for their knowledge of astronomy, calendar-making, mathematics, hydraulics, and geography.

"[27] In 1627, the Jesuit Johann Schreck produced the first book to present Western mechanical knowledge to a Chinese audience, Diagrams and explanations of the wonderful machines of the Far West.

This influence spread to Korea as well, with João Rodrigues providing the Korean mandarin Jeong Duwon astronomical, mathematical, and religious works in the early 1630s, which he carried back to Seoul from Dengzhou and Beijing, prompting local controversy and discussion decades before the first foreign scholars were permitted to enter the country.

In 1703 they established the Beitang (Northern) Church near Zhongnanhai (opposite the former Beijing Library), on land given to the Jesuits by the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing Dynasty in 1694, following his recovery from illness thanks to medical expertise of Fathers Jean-François Gerbillon and Joachim Bouvet.

[40][41][42][43][44] Ricci in his De Christiana expeditione apud Sinas had already started to report on the thoughts of Confucius; he (and, earlier, Michele Ruggieri) made attempts at translating the Four Books, the standard introduction into the Confucian canon.

The French Jesuit Joseph-Marie Amiot wrote a Manchu dictionary Dictionnaire tatare-mantchou-français (Paris, 1789), a work of great value, the language having been previously quite unknown in Europe.

In the early years of the 18th century, Jesuit cartographers travelled throughout the country, performing astronomical observations to verify or determine the latitude and longitude relative to Beijing of various locations, then drew maps based on their findings.

In the early 18th century, a dispute within the Catholic Church arose over whether Chinese folk religion rituals and offerings to the emperor constituted paganism or idolatry.

At first the focal point of dissension was the Jesuit contention that the ceremonial rites of Confucianism and ancestor veneration were primarily social and political in nature and could be practiced by converts.

In 1704 Rome decided against the ancient use of the words Shang Di (supreme emperor) and Tian (heaven) for God, and forbade the practice of sacrifices to Confucius and ancestors.