Matteo Ricci | |
|---|---|
 1610 Chinese portrait of Ricci | |
| Title | Superior General of theChina mission |
| Personal life | |
| Born | 6 October 1552 |
| Died | 11 May 1610(1610-05-11) (aged 57) Beijing,Ming Empire |
| Resting place | Zhalan Cemetery, Beijing |
| Notable work(s) | Kunyu Wanguo Quantu |
| Religious life | |
| Religion | Catholic Church |
| Order | Society of Jesus |
| Senior posting | |
| Period in office | 1597–1610 |
| Successor | Nicolò Longobardo |
| Reason for exit | His death |
Matteo RicciSJ (Italian:[matˈtɛːoˈrittʃi];Latin:Matthaeus Riccius; 6 October 1552 – 11 May 1610) was an ItalianJesuitpriest and one of the founding figures of theJesuit China missions. He created theKunyu Wanguo Quantu, a 1602 map of the world written inChinese characters. In 2022, theApostolic See declared its recognition of Ricci'sheroic virtues, thereby bestowing upon him the honorific ofVenerable.[1]
Ricci arrived at thePortuguese settlement of Macau in 1582 where he began his missionary work in China. He mastered the Chinese language and writing system. He became the first European to enter theForbidden City of Beijing in 1601 when invited by theWanli Emperor, who sought his services in matters such ascourt astronomy andcalendrical science. He emphasized parallels betweenCatholicism andConfucianism but opposedBuddhism. He converted several prominent Chinese officials to Catholicism. He also worked with several Chinese elites, such asXu Guangqi, in translatingEuclid'sElements into Chinese as well as theConfucian classics intoLatin for the first time in history.
Ricci was born on 6 October 1552 inMacerata, part of thePapal States and today a city in the Italian region ofMarche. He studied the classics in his native hometown and studied law at Rome for two years. He entered the Society of Jesus in April 1571 at theRoman College. While there, in addition to philosophy and theology, he also studied mathematics, cosmology, and astronomy under the direction ofChristopher Clavius. In 1577, he applied for a missionary expedition to the Far East. He sailed from Lisbon, Portugal, in March 1578 and arrived inGoa, a Portuguese colony, the following September. Ricci remained employed in teaching and the ministry there until the end of Lent 1582 when he was summoned toMacau to prepare to enter China. Ricci arrived in Macau in the early part of August.[2]
| Matteo Ricci | |||||||||||||||||||||||
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.jpg) The statue of Ricci in downtownMacao, unveiled on 7 August 2010, the anniversary of his arrival on the island | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Traditional Chinese | 利瑪竇 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 利玛窦 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Courtesy name: Xitai | |||||||||||||||||||||||
| Chinese | 西泰 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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In August 1582, Ricci arrived at Macau, a Portuguese trading post on theSouth China Sea.[3]: 79 At the time, Christian missionary activity in China was almost completely limited to Macau, where some of the local Chinese people had converted to Christianity. Three years before,Michele Ruggieri was invited fromPortuguese India expressly to study Chinese, byAlessandro Valignano, founder ofSt. Paul Jesuit College (Macau), and to prepare for the Jesuits' mission from Macau intoMainland China.[4]
Once in Macau, Ricci studied the Chinese language and customs. It was the beginning of a long project that made him one of the first Western scholars to master Chinese script andClassical Chinese. With Ruggieri, he travelled toGuangdong's major cities,Canton andZhaoqing (then the residence of the Viceroy of Guangdong and Guangxi), seeking to establish a permanent Jesuit mission outside Macau.[2]
In 1583, Ricci and Ruggieri settled in Zhaoqing, at the invitation of the governor of Zhaoqing, Wang Pan, who had heard of Ricci's skill as a mathematician and cartographer. Ricci stayed in Zhaoqing from 1583 to 1589, when he was expelled by a new viceroy. It was in Zhaoqing, in 1584, that Ricci composed the first European-style world map in Chinese, called "Da Ying Quan Tu" (Chinese:大瀛全圖;lit. 'Complete Map of the Great World').[5] No prints of the 1584 map are known to exist, but, of the much improved and expandedKunyu Wanguo Quantu of 1602,[6] six recopied, rice-paper versions survive.[7]
It is thought that, during their time in Zhaoqing, Ricci andRuggieri compiled a Portuguese-Chinese dictionary, the first in any European language, for which they developed a system for transcribing Chinese words in the Latin alphabet. The manuscript was misplaced in theJesuit Archives in Rome, rediscovered only in 1934, and published only in 2001.[8][9]
There is now a memorial plaque in Zhaoqing to commemorate Ricci's six-year stay there, as well as a "Ricci Memorial Centre"[10] in a building dating from the 1860s.
Expelled from Zhaoqing in 1588, Ricci obtained permission to relocate toShaoguan (Shaozhou, in Ricci's account) in the north of the province, and reestablish his mission there.[11]
Further travels saw Ricci reachNanjing (Ming's southern capital) andNanchang in 1595. In August 1597,Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606), his superior, appointed him Major Superior of the mission in China, with the rank and powers of a Provincial, a charge that he fulfilled until his death.[12] He moved toTongzhou (a port of Beijing) in 1598, and first reached the capitalBeijing itself on 7 September 1598. However, because of aChinese intervention against the Japanese invasion of Korea at the time, Ricci could not reach theImperial Palace. After waiting for two months, he left Beijing; first for Nanjing and thenSuzhou inSouthern Zhili Province.
During the winter of 1598, Ricci, with the help of his Jesuit colleagueLazzaro Cattaneo, compiled another Chinese-Portuguese dictionary, in which tones in Chinese syllables were indicated in Roman text with diacritical marks. Unlike Ricci's and Ruggieri's earlier Portuguese-Chinese dictionary, this work has not been found.[8]
In 1601, Ricci was invited to become an adviser to the imperial court of theWanli Emperor, the first Westerner to be invited into theForbidden City. This honor was in recognition of Ricci's scientific abilities, chiefly his predictions of solar eclipses, which were significant events in the Chinese world.[13] He established theCathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Beijing, the oldestCatholic church in the city.[14] Ricci was given free access to the Forbidden City but never met the reclusive Wanli Emperor, who, however, granted him patronage, with a generous stipend and supported Ricci's completion of theZhifang Waiji, China's first global atlas.[15]
Once established in Beijing, Ricci was able to meet important officials and leading members of the Beijing cultural scene and convert a number of them to Christianity,[16][17] the most prominent being leading agronomistXu Guangqi.[18]
Ricci was also the first European to learn about theKaifeng Jews,[19] being contacted by a member of that community who was visiting Beijing in 1605. Ricci never visitedKaifeng,Henan Province, but he sent a junior missionary there in 1608, the first of many such missions. In fact, the elderlyChief Rabbi of the Jews was ready to cede his power to Ricci, as long as he gave up eating pork, but Ricci never accepted the position.[19]
Ricci died on 11 May 1610, inBeijing, aged 57.[2] By the code of the Ming Dynasty, foreigners who died in China had to be buried inMacau.Diego de Pantoja made a special plea to the court, requesting a burial plot in Beijing, in the light of Ricci's contributions to China. The Wanli Emperor granted this request and designated a Buddhist temple for the purpose. In October 1610, Ricci's remains were transferred there.[20] The graves ofFerdinand Verbiest,Johann Adam Schall von Bell, and other missionaries are also there, and it became known as theZhalan Cemetery, which is today located within the campus of theBeijing Administrative College, inXicheng District, Beijing.[21]
Ricci was succeeded as Provincial Superior of the China mission byNicolò Longobardo in 1610. Longobardo entrusted another Jesuit,Nicolas Trigault, with expanding and editing, as well as translating into Latin, those of Ricci's papers that were found in his office after his death. This work was first published in 1615 inAugsburg asDe Christiana expeditione apud Sinas and soon was translated into a number of other European languages.[22]
Ricci could speak Chinese as well as read and writeclassical Chinese, the literary language of scholars and officials. He was known for his appreciation ofChinese culture in general but condemned theprostitution which was widespread in Beijing at the time.[23] He also called the Chinese "barbarians" in letters back home to his friends, and opposed what he considered to beanti-Black prejudice among the populace. He noted this, however, in the context of his function as aslave catcher for the Portuguese. (Ricci himself also owned African slaves.)[24]
During his research, he discovered that in contrast to the cultures ofSouth Asia, Chinese culture was strongly intertwined withConfucian values and therefore decided to use existing Chinese concepts to explain Christianity.[25] With his superior Valignano's formal approval, he aligned himself with the Confucian intellectually elite literati,[26] and even adopted their mode of dress. He did not explain the Catholic faith as entirely foreign or new; instead, he said that the Chinese culture and people always believed in God and that Christianity is the completion of their faith,[27]: 323 and explained the tenets of the Catholic faith through existing Chinese precepts and practices.[3]: 79 He borrowed an unusual Chinese term,Tiānzhǔ (天主, "Lord of Heaven") to describe theGod of Abraham, despite the term's origin intraditional Chinese worship ofHeaven. (He also cited many synonyms from the Confucian Classics.)
Ricci took an accommodating approach on various Chinese practices, including rituals such as ancestor worship.[3]: 81 Dominican andFranciscan missionaries considered this an unacceptable accommodation and later appealed to theVatican on the issue.[27]: 324 ThisChinese rites controversy continued for centuries. In 1721, fallout from the controversy led theKangxi emperor to expel the Jesuits.[3]: 81 The Vatican's most recent statement on the Chinese rites controversy came in 1939. Some contemporary authors have praised Ricci as an exemplar of beneficialinculturation,[28][29] avoiding at the same time distorting theGospel message or neglecting the indigenous cultural media.[30]
Like developments in India, the identification of European culture with Christianity led almost to the end ofCatholic missions in China, but Christianity continued to grow inSichuan and some other locations.[27]: 324
Xu Guangqi and Ricci became the first two to translate some of theConfucian classics into a Western language, Latin.
Ricci also met aKorean emissary to China, teaching the basic tenets of Catholicism and donating several books.[31] Along withJoão Rodrigues's gifts to the ambassadorJeong Duwon in 1631, Ricci's gifts influenced the creation of Korea'sSilhak movement.[32]
Matteo Ricci | |
|---|---|
 Ricci withXu Guangqi (right),fromAthanasius Kircher'sChina Illustrata, 1667 | |
| Born | (1552-10-06)6 October 1552 Macerata,Papal States |
| Died | 11 May 1610(1610-05-11) (aged 57) Beijing,Ming Empire |
The cause of his beatification, originally begun in 1984, was reopened on 24 January 2010, at the cathedral of the Italian diocese of Macerata-Tolentino-Recanati-Cingoli-Treia.[33][34] Bishop Claudio Giuliodori, the apostolic administrator of the Diocese of Macerata, formally closed the diocesan phase of the sainthood process on 10 May 2013. The cause moved to theCongregation for the Causes of Saints at the Vatican in 2014. Pope Francis issued a decree on 17 December 2022 that Ricci had lived a life of heroic virtue, thus conferring on him the title ofVenerable.
The following places and institutions are named after Matteo Ricci:
In 2010, to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Matteo Ricci's death, the Italy Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo in China commissioned Italian sculptorDionisio Cimarelli[46] to create a monumental bust in his honor. This sculpture was later exhibited for about two years at the Italian Embassy in Beijing. Subsequently, the Marche Regional Government purchased the work, while the original model is now permanently exhibited at the main entrance of the Italian Consulate in Shanghai.
In the run-up to the 400th anniversary of Ricci's death, theVatican Museums hosted a major exhibit dedicated to his life. Additionally, Italian film director Gjon Kolndrekaj produced a 60-minute documentary about Ricci, released in 2009, titledMatteo Ricci: A Jesuit in the Dragon's Kingdom, filmed in Italy and China.[47][48]
In Taipei, theTaipei Ricci Institute and theNational Central Library of Taiwan opened jointly the Matteo Ricci Pacific Studies Reading Room[49] and the Taipei-basedonline magazineeRenlai, directed by JesuitBenoît Vermander, dedicated its June 2010 issue to the commemoration of the 400th anniversary of Ricci's death.[50]
The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven (天主實義) is a book written by Ricci, which argues thatConfucianism andChristianity are not opposed and in fact are remarkably similar in key respects. It was written in the form of a dialogue, originally in Chinese. Ricci used the treatise in his missionary effort to convert Chinese literati, men who were educated in Confucianism and the Chinese classics. In theChinese Rites controversy, some Roman-Catholic missionaries raised the question of whether Ricci and otherJesuits had gone too far and changed Christian beliefs to win converts.[51]
Peter Phan argues thatTrue Meaning was used by a Jesuit missionary to Vietnam,Alexandre de Rhodes, in writing a catechism for Vietnamese Christians.[52] In 1631,Girolamo Maiorica and Bernardino Reggio, both Jesuit missionaries to Vietnam, started a short-lived press in Thăng Long (present-dayHanoi) to print copies ofTrue Meaning and other texts.[53] The book was also influential on later Protestant missionaries to China, James Legge and Timothy Richard, and through them John Nevius, John Ross, andWilliam Edward Soothill, all influential in establishing Protestantism in China and Korea.
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Ricci translated various European scientific works into Chinese.[3]: 79 Other works by Ricci include:
Brucker, Joseph (1912). "Matteo Ricci". In Herbermann, Charles (ed.).Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 13. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
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