context for M&D

[pynchonoid]

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Asia (February, 2003)

Albert Chan, S.J. _Chinese Books and Documents in the
Jesuit
Archives in Rome: A Descriptive Catalogue: Japonica
Sinica I-IV_.
Armonk, N.Y.: M.E.  Sharpe, 2002. xliii + 626 pp.
Bibliographical
references and abbreviations, illustrations, indices.
$145.00
(cloth), ISBN 0-7656-0828-6.

Reviewed for H-Asia by Eugenio Menegon
<Eugenio.Menegon at arts.kuleuven.ac.be>, Department of
Oriental and
Slavonic Studies, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven,
Belgium

A Gate to the China Materials in the Roman Jesuit
Archives

Between the late sixteenth century and the eighteenth
century,
Catholic missionaries to China--especially
Jesuits--were the only
foreign observers allowed in the Chinese empire.
Besides engaging in
their religious work, they also acted as the first
Western
interpreters of China. The books they published in
Latin and in a
number of European languages on the history, geography
and culture
of China, based on first-hand experience and knowledge
of the
country, offered to the scholars and "curious readers"
of Europe a
wide range of topics, going from descriptions of the
imperial
bureaucracy, to the philosophy of Confucius, to
Chinese
pharmacopoeia. Most of this knowledge was derived from
Chinese
informants, but also, to a large extent, from Chinese
books. Besides
consulting them in loco, missionaries also brought or
sent Chinese
books back to Europe, both as curios and as proof of
their labors in
Asia.  European bibliophiles since the late sixteenth
century
remained fascinated by these books from China:  their
physical
appearance, the thin, almost transparent paper of
their pages, the
mysterious Chinese characters, all made these objects
a prized
collectible. And thus, sometimes by chance, sometimes
by design,
Chinese books found their way to a number of European
royal
libraries, as well as to the papal library in Rome.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Rome
hosted in the
aggregate of its libraries and archives one of the
largest
concentrations of Chinese materials in Europe.  Some
important
collections assembled through the efforts of scholarly
patrons such
as Cardinal Girolamo Casanate in the late seventeenth
century and
Cardinal Stefano Borgia in the second half of the
eighteenth century
included Chinese holdings, and were occasionally
opened to visiting
European "orientalists."  Nevertheless, the most
active academic
centers of European proto-sinology were elsewhere:
Paris, Leiden,
Berlin, and St. Petersburg.

One of the reasons for the scholarly marginality of
Rome in Chinese
studies was the narrow focus of the ecclesiastical
collections: a
large portion of the Chinese materials found there was
gathered in
the context of the famous--or rather
notorious--Chinese Rites
Controversy.[1] Starting in the 1650s, Rome became the
main site of
a bitter theological struggle over missionary
strategies in China,
pitting the Jesuits and their sympathizers against
other religious
orders (mainly the Dominicans and the Foreign Mission
Society of
Paris). The issue of the so-called "Chinese Rites"
crystallized the
essence of the diatribe: was it possible to allow
Chinese Christians
to participate in ancestral rituals and in the cult to
Confucius,
seen as civil ceremonies with no religious meaning, as
the Jesuits
thought, or was this a way to condone idolatry and
superstition, as
the Dominicans and their allies believed? Other
connected issues
were the permissibility of translation of liturgical
books and of
the liturgy itself into Chinese, and the creation of a
Chinese-Christian theological vocabulary.

A steady stream of treatises, letters, and reports
from the Chinese
missions continued to reach the Eternal City, debating
the issue of
the Chinese Rites, of liturgy and terminology. 
Subsequently,
disputes ensued in the papal commissions of the
Congregation _De
Propaganda Fide_ (the "Ministry of Missions" of the
Catholic
church), as well as of the Holy Office, the
institution that
controlled the purity of the faith and ran the Roman
Inquisition.
Often, along with reports in Western languages,
Catholic books
written in Chinese, as well as other books on Chinese
philosophy and
religion, were brought back by envoys of the two
factions to be used
in the battle.  These texts were occasionally read by
a small number
of "old China hands" who had left the mission and
traveled back to
Rome to defend their respective positions in the papal
commissions. [...]

... enjoy!

-Doug


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