The Role of late-Ming Chinese Catechisms in the Sino-European Dialogue

It is in the late Ming dynasty that the Jesuits Michele Ruggieri (1543-1607), Matteo Ricci (1552-1610), and, later on, João Soeiro (1566-1607) embarked on an adventurous journey into China, bringing their baggage of theology, philosophy and science, as well as a humanist and Christian vision of the world, freshly reviewed by the gradual Catholic reformation taking place throughout Sixteenth-Century Europe. They entered a country at once unknown and yet somewhat familiar to them, China having been the source of their imagination since Marco Polo, and the object of Saint Francis-Xavier’s (1506-1552) missionary endeavours while he was preaching in Japan, where the latter noticed the great influence Chinese culture had in its neighbouring countries. nce Ruggieri and Ricci entered China in 1582, they soon realized the overwhelming difficulties they were to face. In order to overcome these difficulties, they searched in their respective cultures for a point of encounter, which was to be the importance and high impact of written culture, common to both European and Chinese cultures. Thus, the Jesuits used China’s print culture to publish an astonishingly large number of works. Between 1514 and 1727, Henri Bernard recorded a number of 623 published works by the Jesuits, most of them about the Christian doctrine. These Chinese catechetical works should not only be observed from their Chinese point of view, but also from the European view, taking into account the background of the Jesuit missionaries. Furthermore, we must keep in mind that these texts were often co-authored, be it by several Western missionaries or by the Chinese and the missionaries, be it directly or indirectly—for instance by the writing of prefaces or postscripts. Therefore, as a means of communications and as a fruit of the Sino-Western dialogue, what role have these catechetical works played in the gradual process of the Sino-Western dialogue? he main objective of this thesis is to explore this process of cross-cultural encounter, through a series of early catechetical works by the first Jesuits of China: Tianzhu shilu (by Ruggieri, published in 1584), Tianzhu shiyi (Ricci, 1603), Jiren shipian (Ricci, 1608), and Tianzhu shengjiao yueyan (Soeiro, 1601). These catechetical works were all written before 1610, in the early period of Jesuit missionary activities, and they are considered more as apologetics, or pre-catechetical dialogues, rather than catechisms containing the whole of Christian doctrine. Through the analysis and comparison of these apologetics, I would like to observe the reinterpretation by the missionaries of their own identity and the gradual elaboration of a specifically “Chinese Christian” identity. While putting into words and interpreting the Other, the Jesuits carried with them the heavy baggage of European culture and thoughts, using the latter to reinterpret Chinese culture, but at the same time, the dialogue established with the Chinese was to influence both sides in the process, bringing them to reconsider and even redefine their respective identities.