Matthew Ricci
Their missionary tenure, however, was not without controversy. Roman Catholic clerics resented the outsiders and their translations into the vernacular. To counteract the opposition, the brothers journeyed to Rome in 867 and there gained the endorsement of the pope. Before they could return to their Slavic mission, however, Cyril died. Methodius returned to the mission but found himself caught between political and religious rivalries for the remainder of his life. Yet, with the help of disciples, he continued to translate the Bible and other literature. Today the brothers are commemorated by both the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches and are seen as precursors to the translation work of Martin Luther and of translators of the modern missions era.
The politically oriented missionary endeavors of the Roman Catholic Church during the medieval period brought many new regions into the sphere of Christian influence. But the church was losing ground at the same time—and not just any ground. The Holy Land—the very center of Christianity in the early centuries—was shaken to the core by the invading armies of Islam. “With lightening speed,” writes J. Herbert Kane, “they conquered Damascus (635), Antioch (636), Jerusalem (638), Caesarea (640), and Alexandria (642).” Unlike the marauding barbarians that had brought down the Roman Empire more than two centuries earlier, the Muslims often brought culture with them. It was a time when “Arab civilization was at its height”—a time when “Baghdad boasted twenty-six public libraries and countless private ones.”25
But no amount of culture or civilization could compensate for the losses, which came at a time when the West was barely holding its own against barbarian invasions. But for Charles Martel, whose army was victorious at the Battle of Tours in 722, France and all of Western Europe might have fallen to Muslim control. The Christians were clearly on the defensive. The long-delayed response to this tragic situation was itself a tragedy of monumental proportions—coming in the form of the Crusades. With no strategic planning, the Crusades had a snowball effect, the consequences of which are still being felt today. The swarms of people that set out for the Holy Land over a two-hundred-year period (1095—1291) caused unspeakable damage, and tens of thousands of lives were lost. Though the early crusades were favored with a degree of military success, those gains were lost in the end. So bitter was the animosity of Muslims toward Christians that even today the memory has not been erased.
Not all Christians of this period, however, believed that military force was the appropriate way to deal with the Muslims. During the early thirteenth century, while the crusading spirit was still at high pitch, Francis of Assisi proposed that the Muslims should be won by love instead of by hate. His first two attempts to evangelize them were completely unsuccessful, but his third attempt in 1219 brought him into the presence of the sultan of Egypt. Restricted by language barriers, Francis nevertheless made a feeble attempt at presenting the gospel. Though there is no evidence that any actual conversions resulted from his efforts, his example paved the way for others to view Muslims as potential brothers in Christ. Among them was Raymond Lull, an outstanding missionary of this period.
Lull was born in 1232 to a wealthy Roman Catholic family of Majorca, an island off the coast of Spain in the Mediterranean that had been taken back from the Muslims not long before his birth. As a young man he served in the Spanish court of the king of Aragon. Though married with children, he had mistresses on the side, and “by his own testimony lived a life of utter immorality.”26Yet he was recognized for his scholarship and literary talent.
In his early thirties, Lull returned to Majorca, where he underwent a profound religious experience—a mystical experience marked by visions. The first vision came suddenly one evening when he was composing an erotic song. He saw “the Savior hanging on His cross, the blood trickling from His hands and feet and brow, look reproachfully at him.” Though moved by the vision, he returned to his song-writing the following week. Again the vision appeared, and this time he committed his life to Christ. But immediately doubts arose: “How can I, defiled with impurity, rise and enter on a holier life?”27 Consumed with guilt, he decided to forsake wealth and prestige and devote himself to God.
Lull equated God’s call with a call to monasticism. The ultimate demonstration of love for God, he believed, was living a life as a reclusive monk, wholly separated from the temptations of the world. It would take another vision to make him conscious of his responsibilities to others. In his book The Tree of Love, he relates the vision that became his missionary call: He is in a forest alone where he meets a pilgrim, who, on learning of Lull’s chosen vocation, scolds him for his self-centeredness and challenges him to go out into the world and bring others the message of Christ. This vision convinced him that God was directing him to evangelize the nomadic Muslim Saracens—the most hated and feared enemies of Christendom. “I see many knights going to the Holy Land beyond the seas,” he wrote, “and thinking that they can acquire it by force of arms, but in the end all are destroyed before they attain that which they think to have. Whence it seems to me that the conquest of the Holy Land ought … to be attempted … by love and prayers, and the pouring out of tears and blood.”28
Following this vision, Lull studied the Arabic language—a nine-year ordeal that was marred by an unfortunate incident that almost ruined his future missionary career. To aid in his study of the language he purchased a Saracen slave, who one day lashed back at Lull by cursing Christ. Lull lost his temper and hit the slave, who grabbed a weapon and severely wounded him. For that crime the Muslim slave was imprisoned and soon afterward committed suicide, fearing his fate would be worse. It was a traumatic ordeal for Lull, but it gave him an even greater passion to reach the Muslims for Christ.
Lull was past the age of forty when his actual missionary career began, and in later life he recalled what sacrifices that decision entailed: “I had a wife and children; I was tolerably rich; I led a secular life. All these things I cheerfully resigned for the sake of promoting the common good and diffusing abroad the holy faith.”29 He set aside funds for his wife and children and gave the remainder to the poor.
Lull’s missionary outreach was three-pronged: apologetical, educational, and evangelistic. “He devised a philosophical … system for persuading non-Christians of the truth of Christianity; he established missionary colleges; and he himself went and preached to the Moslems.”30 His achievement as a Christian apologist to the Muslims was immense—some sixty books on theology. His mission, as he perceived it, was to “experiment whether he himself could not persuade some of them [to believe in] the Incarnation of the Son of God and the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity in the Divine Unity of Essence.” He sought to establish “a parliament of religions, and desired to meet the bald monotheism of Islam face to face with the revelation of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”31
In the area of missionary education, Lull, in the tradition of Columba, viewed monasteries as the ideal training ground for evangelists. He traveled widely, appealing to church and political leaders to support him in the cause. King James II of Spain was one of those who caught his vision; and in 1276, with his enthusiastic support and financial contributions, Lull opened a monastery on Majorca with thirteen Franciscan monks and a curriculum that included courses in the Arabic language and in the “geography of missions.” His dream was to establish training centers all over Europe, but to do that he had to convince the Roman Catholic hierarchy of their value—no easy task. When he visited Rome on various occasions, his ideas were either ridiculed or ignored by a church hierarchy that was more interested in worldly pleasures and personal aggrandizement than in missions. He was successful, however, in influencing a decision at the Council of Vienna to have Arabic offered in the European universities—a step that he believed would open up dialogue between Christians and Muslims.
Lull’s own missionary career did not begin with the flair that one might expect from this visionary missions enthusiast. It was one thing, he realized, to preach missions to others, but it was quite another to go forth himself. He was at the port in Genoa, ready to sail for Tunis. His belongings were on board ship. Crowds of well-wishers were preparing for a rousing send-off. Then at the last moment he was “overwhelmed with terror,” as he later recalled; he was paralyzed “at the thought of what might befall him.”32 His belongings were unloaded, and the ship left port without him. Almost immediately he was overcome with remorse, and he determined to go on the next ship no matter what the consequences. Though racked by fever—probably caused by the emotional turmoil he was suffering—he was placed aboard another ship, and thus began his missionary career.
Lull’s fears about conducting mission work in Tunis were certainly not unfounded. Tunis was a powerful center of Islam in North Africa that had held off repeated invasions. The crusaders were viewed with hatred and bitterness. His arrival was not greeted with as much hostility as he had expected, however. He made his presence known to the leading Muslim scholars and then called a conference to debate the relative merits of Christianity and Islam, promising that if Islam were demonstrated to be superior, he would embrace it as his faith. The Muslim leaders agreed to his terms.
The reaction to Lull’s defense of Christianity was mixed. A number seemed to accept his arguments or at least showed an interest in hearing more, but the majority were stung by the verbal attack. Not surprisingly, he was thrown into prison, where he waited in terror, fully expecting the death penalty. Instead, he was stoned by a mob and ordered out of the country—an order he secretly defied. For three months he “concealed himself like a wharf-rat” in the coastal town of Goletta.33 Frustrated by his lack of freedom, he returned to Europe, where he spent several years in Naples and then France, lecturing and writing books on his “New Method,” always seeking new recruits to join his mission.
While the Muslims were the primary object of Lull’s missionary passion, Jews also caught his attention. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were marred by horror stories of anti-Semitism. Jews were blamed for almost every ill in society, and as a result were expelled from France and England—mild punishment compared with that meted out by the Spanish Inquisition. Here and there, out-spoken individuals defended the Jews, and among them was Lull. He reached out to them as he had the Saracens, presenting Christ to them as their Messiah.
Lull’s travel and varied activities kept him busy in Europe, but in 1307, at the age of seventy-five, after a fifteen-year absence, he returned to North Africa—this time to Bugia, east of Algiers. As in Tunis years earlier, he immediately sought a forum for public debate, and he boldly challenged the Muslims to compare their religion with Christianity. Though he claimed to reach out to the Muslims in love, his message was often very offensive and may have further embittered the Muslims toward Christianity. One of his arguments, as Samuel Zwemer relates, was to hold up the Ten Commandments “as the perfect law of God, and then [to show] from their own books that Mohammed violated every one of these precepts. Another approach was to portray the seven cardinal virtues and the seven deadly sins, only to show subsequently how bare Islam was of the former and how full of the latter!” Again, Lull’s public debate did not continue long. He was sent to prison, and for six months his captors “plied him … with all the sensual temptations of Islam.”34
Following his imprisonment, he was sent back to Europe. His career as a foreign missionary, however, was not over. In 1314, when he was past the age of eighty, he returned to Tunis, where his age alone apparently brought him some protection. Perhaps too, he had mellowed over the years, for he was granted more liberty than before. He won some converts, though ever more conscious of the difficulty of the task. “For one Saracen who becomes a Christian,” he wrote, “ten Christians and more become Mohammedans.”35
Although Lull’s stay in Tunis was rewarding, he did not win the ultimate reward—the crown of martyrdom. To die in the service of his Master would be the highest privilege. So in 1314 he returned to Bugia to see his little band of converts and to put his defense of Christianity to the final test.
For over ten months the aged missionary dwelt in hiding, talking and praying with his converts…. At length, weary of seclusion, and longing for martyrdom, he came forth into the open market and presented himself to the people as the same man whom they had once expelled from their town…. Filled with fanatic fury at his boldness, and unable to reply to his arguments, the populace seized him, and dragged him out of the town; there by the command, or at least the connivance, of the king, he was stoned on the 30th of June, 1315.36
He died shortly thereafter.
Lull’s missionary focus was primarily that of apologetics—to persuade people to accept the Christian faith because it was true. He was convinced that true understanding was built on systematic teaching and rational arguments. Other Catholic missionaries would focus on social justice and good works.
The age of discovery that began in the late fifteenth century ushered in an era of overseas missions for the Roman Catholic Church. The New World was viewed in terms of territorial expansion, and both popes and political leaders were eager to do their part to bring it under Catholic domination. Queen Isabella of Spain regarded the evangelism of the Indians as the most important justification for colonial expansion, and she insisted that priests and friars be among the first to settle in the New World. The Franciscans and Dominicans (and later the Jesuits) eagerly accepted the challenge. In some areas mass conversions were commonplace. In 1529 a Franciscan missionary in Mexico recorded that he and another monk baptized “upwards of 200,000 persons—so many in fact that I cannot give an accurate estimate of the number. Often baptized in a single day 14,000 people, sometimes 10,000, sometimes 8,000.”37
The greatest obstacle to missions in the New World proved to be the colonists themselves and their cruel treatment of the native Indians. Though Queen Isabella had decreed that the freedom of the Indians was to be honored, they actually were treated inhumanely in a system that fostered their virtual slavery. Such treatment did not go unnoticed by the missionaries, and some risked their lives to protect the native people. Among them was Bartholomew de Las Casas, who though slow to recognize and admit the evil, became the greatest champion of the native Indians during the Spanish colonial period.
Las Casas was born in Spain in 1474, the son of a merchant who had sailed with Columbus on his second voyage. After receiving his law degree, he sailed to the island of Hispaniola to serve as the governor’s legal advisor. He quickly settled into the affluent lifestyle of the colonists, accepting the conventional view of the native population, participating in raids against them, and enslaving them on his plantation. In 1510, in his mid-thirties, a spiritual experience prompted him to seek ordination as a priest. Yet outwardly he changed little, enjoying the lavish lifestyle that characterized most of the clergy. Gradually, however, his heart changed—particularly through the influence of Dominicans who decried the cruel enslavement of Indians.
In 1514, at age forty, Las Casas, now a priest in Cuba, was preparing a sermon for Pentecost Sunday. As he read the Scripture, he suffered “pangs of conscience,” realizing that there can be no true prayer and public worship without the outward exercise of justice. In that transforming moment he truly began to “consider the misery and servitude that those people suffer.” After several days of meditation, he vowed that his life would take a different course. “In that Pentecost,” writes Gustavo Gutierrez, “the feast that recalls the presence of the Holy Spirit, Las Casas recognized his own responsibility.”38
Las Casas joined the Dominicans, and in the years that followed would become the New World’s most vocal advocate for the Indians. In that role he traveled to and from Spain, pleading their cause with government officials and anyone who would listen, sometimes presenting a naïve and oversimplified case:
God created these simple people without evil and without guile. They are most obedient and faithful to their natural lords, and to the Christians whom they serve. They are most submissive, patient, peaceful, and virtuous. Nor are they quarrelsome, rancorous, querulous, or vengeful. They neither possess nor desire to possess worldly wealth. Surely these people would be the most blessed in the world if only they worshipped the true God.39
Las Casas’s ministry was more than mere humanitarianism, however. Evangelism was a priority, and for a number of years he traveled in Central America doing pioneer work. In one instance he convinced a native chief who had been terrorizing the colonists to lay down his weapons and to let all his tribe be baptized. Due to colonial opposition, however, most of his conversions did not come that easily.
At the age of seventy, Las Casas was appointed Bishop of Chiapas, an utterly impoverished area in southern Mexico that he chose above another far more prosperous diocese, even though, according to Latourette, “He must have known [it] would be one of the most trying tasks of his career.”40 Most of the Spanish planters there blamed him for the New Laws enacted by the Spanish crown that were designed to give the Indians protection and liberty. The enforcement of these laws would ruin the plantation economy—so said the Spanish landowners—and they simply ignored them. Las Casas, in turn, ordered his priests to deny absolution to any such lawbreakers, and the battle lines were drawn. Many of Las Casas’s own priests defied him, and after three years he gave up his bishopric, discouraged and defeated. In 1547, at the age of seventy-three, he sailed from the New World, never to return. His battle for human rights continued on in Spain until his death almost two decades later, however, and he is still remembered as one of Christendom’s greatest humanitarian missionaries.
Not all Dominicans were known for social justice and humanitarian outreach. They, along with Franciscans and other religious orders, played an active role in the Inquisition—a “mission” to keep the church free from heresy. All these were a significant part of what could be termed “home missions” in Europe. But the age of discovery would see the Catholic Church planted far beyond the boundaries of Europe and the New World.
The sixteenth century, which often seems dominated by the events of the Protestant Reformation, was also marked by a Catholic Reformation—a reformation to counteract the gains of the Protestants, to shore up the crumbling walls of the medieval church, and to expand the church to distant lands. This expansion was aimed not only to the West, but also toward India and the Far East, where lucrative trade routes were being established. The Catholic Church was anxious to cash in on this new wave of overseas travel, and adventurous missionary monks and friars eagerly volunteered for duty. The late-medieval religious orders, the Dominicans and Franciscans, supplied many of these courageous volunteers, but it was the Jesuits (the Society of Jesus), founded in 1535, who became the Counter-Reformation’s most active participants. The founding of that organization, writes Stephen Neill, “is perhaps the most important event in the missionary history of the Roman Catholic Church.”41
Ignatius of Loyola, a Spanish nobleman, was the founder of the Jesuits, and under his control the little band of dedicated disciples grew into a highly centralized, military-like organization that viewed loyalty to the pope and the Roman Catholic Church as its highest ideal. The order expanded rapidly: by the time of Loyola’s death in 1556 there were over a thousand members, and in less than a century after its founding there were more than fifteen thousand members spread all over the globe. The most renowned of these early Jesuit missionaries was Francis Xavier, one of Loyola’s inner circle of six and a charter member of the order. In 1541 he sailed for India, representing both the pope and the king of Portugal, to begin his short but extraordinary missionary career.
Xavier was born in 1506 to a Spanish noble family and grew up in a castle in the Basque countryside. As a youth he attended the University of Paris, where his interests leaned toward philosophy and theology. There he began spending time with a group of Protestants—dedicated young Christians who were risking their lives in the Catholic stronghold of Paris. But then Xavier met Loyola, a man fiercely devoted to the Roman Catholic Church, whose dynamic personal magnetism had a powerful effect on the spiritually unsettled young student. It was not long before Xavier joined with Loyola, turning his back both on the Protestants and on the lucrative career he might have had in the Catholic Church. Instead, he took a vow of poverty and celibacy, and committed himself wholly to spreading the Catholic faith.
Xavier’s call to overseas missions came suddenly and without visions or voices. Two other Jesuits had been chosen to go to India as missionaries, and when one of them became ill, Xavier was assigned to take his place. With less than twenty-four hours warning, he was on his way. He arrived at the port city of Goa in 1542, where he found a morally corrupt society influenced far more by European culture than by religion. Xavier was frustrated, wondering how such people could be brought to Christ. He soon discovered that a ministry focused on children was more effective than one focused on adults. Children were more easily swayed than their parents, and it was his hope that he and the priests who would follow him could train them from early childhood to become effective Christian leaders in their own communities. This strategy was one he would follow during most of his missionary career.
Xavier did not remain in Goa long. The westernized society with its mixture of Jews and Muslims was not to his liking. When his exhortations failed to make an impact on the city, he pled with the king of Portugal to introduce the Inquisition and force the people to adhere to Catholic dogma and morality. But before that could be arranged, he left, seeking a more fruitful vineyard. “I want to be where there are … out-and-out pagans,” he wrote, believing that in such an environment conversions would come more easily.42
From Goa, Xavier moved farther south in India to work among the impoverished pearl fishermen along the coast. The people were Hindus, and their response to Christianity depended largely on caste. The high-caste Brahmans were antagonistic, but the low-caste Paravas were much more open to change, realizing their status in society could not be worsened by such a move. Great crowds came out to learn and recite creeds, and baptisms were plentiful—so many that on some days Xavier was so tired from performing the sacrament that he could hardly move his arms. Yet baptism was to him the most important aspect of the ministry, and he would not deny anyone, no matter how tired he was. Appealing to Loyola for more workers, he wrote, “In these heathen places the only education necessary is to be able to teach the prayers and to go about baptizing little ones who now die in great numbers without the Sacrament because we cannot be everywhere at once to succor them.”43
Xavier’s emphasis on baptism and his concentration on children went hand in hand. To a fellow worker he wrote, “I earnestly recommend to you the teaching of the children, and be very diligent about the baptism of newly born babies. Since the grownups have no hankering for Paradise, whether to escape the evils of life or to attain their happiness, at least let the little ones go there by baptizing them before they die.”44 But Xavier’s emphasis on children was not just to ensure them a place in Paradise. His child converts became evangelists:
>Francis Xavier, missionary to India and Japan.
As it was impossible for me to meet personally the ever growing volume of calls … I resorted to the following expedient. I told the children who memorized the Christian doctrine to betake themselves to the homes of the sick, there to collect as many of the family and neighbors as possible, and to say the Creed with them several times, assuring the sick persons that if they believed they would be cured…. In this way I managed to satisfy all my callers, and at the same time secured that the Creed, the Commandments, and the prayers were taught in the people’s homes and abroad in the streets.45
Perhaps far more exciting for the youngsters than visiting the sick and reciting creeds were the other types of religious activities in which Xavier encouraged them to become involved. “They detest the idolatries of their people, and get into fights with them on the subject,” he wrote with pride. “They tackle even their own parents if they find them going to the idols, and come to tell me about it. When I hear from them of some idolatrous ceremonies in the villages … I collect all the boys I can, and off we go together…. The little fellows seize the small clay idols, smash them, grind them to dust, spit on them and trample them underfoot.”46
Xavier’s evangelism in India was superficial at best. Whether the children and adults who were baptized even knew the most fundamental truths of Christianity is doubtful. After three years of working among the pearl fishermen along the coast, he still had not begun to master the very difficult Tamil language, and even the simple prayers and creeds he taught the people were later found to be very poorly translated. Church services were ritualistic and repetitious, as Xavier’s own account would indicate:
On Sundays I assemble all the people, men and women, young and old, and get them to repeat the prayers in their language. They take much pleasure in doing so, and come to the meetings gladly…. I give out the First Commandment, which they repeat, and then we all say together, Jesus Christ, Son of God, grant us grace to love thee above all things. When we have asked for this grace, we recite the Pater Noster together, and then cry with one accord, Holy Mary, Mother of Jesus Christ, obtain for us grace from thy Son to enable us to keep the First Commandment. Next we say Ave Maria, and proceed in the same manner through each of the remaining nine Commandments. And just as we say twelve Paters and Aves in honour of the twelve articles of the Creed, so we say ten Paters and Aves in honour of the Ten Commandments, asking God to give us grace to keep them well.47
Xavier had not come to India to settle down in one area and establish a long-term ministry. He considered himself a trailblazer and was anxious to move on and lay the groundwork for Jesuit missions elsewhere. When he left India in 1545 for the Far East, his place was quickly filled by others, and within a few decades there were more than a dozen Christian villages.
Whether encountering children or adults, Xavier was always prepared to offer an evangelistic witness. He writes of one such incident before he left India: “I encountered a merchant who had a ship with wares. I spoke to him about the things of God, and God gave him to realize within himself that there are other wares in which he had not traded.” The man left behind his ship and wares and became Xavier’s companion evangelist. “He is thirty-five years old. A soldier of the world for all his life, he is now a soldier of Christ. He heartily commends himself to your prayers. His name is Joao d’Eiro.”48
From India, Xavier went to Malacca on the Malay peninsula, where he ministered for a time; but his dream was to visit Japan and bring the gospel there. While in Goa in 1548 he met Anjiro, a Japanese man who convinced him that with proper conduct and logical reasoning a missionary could expect great results in Japan: “The king, the nobility, and all other people of discretion would become Christians, for the Japanese, he said, are entirely guided by the law of reason.”49
Xavier arrived in Japan in 1549 and quickly realized that his ministry there would be much more difficult than the glowing predictions had indicated. The language barrier stymied any attempt at evangelism: “We are like so many statues amongst them, for they speak and talk to us about many things, whilst we, not understanding the language, hold our peace.” Nevertheless, Xavier could write only months after he arrived that the people were very fond of hearing about the things of God, “chiefly when they understand them.”50 Some apparently did understand, for when Xavier left the country after two years he left behind some one hundred converts.
The freedom they encountered was a result of Japan’s unstable political environment. There was no centralized government, and Buddhism was on the decline. That situation continued after Xavier departed, and the Jesuit missionaries who followed him witnessed impressive results. In the 1570s large numbers of Japanese began turning to Catholicism. Some fifty thousand in one region alone were baptized, and it is estimated that by the close of the sixteenth century there were some three hundred thousand professing Christians. This occurred despite a dramatic change in the Japanese political scene. Foreign missionaries were no longer welcome, and Japanese Christians faced severe persecution, sometimes resulting in death by crucifixion. In 1638 several thousand Christians took part in the Shimabara Rebellion, protesting persecution and exorbitant taxes. They finally took refuge in a castle where, after weeks of holding their own, they were defeated and slaughtered. But despite such setbacks, Catholicism continued to have an influence in Japan for more than two centuries.
Xavier returned to Goa following his departure from Japan, and from there he made plans to go to China, hoping to penetrate that land with the gospel. But it would be left to another Jesuit to pioneer the work there. For while Xavier was arranging entry, he contracted a fever and died on an island just off the coast of China, only ten years after his missionary career had begun.
“Barbarians Not Welcome.” This slogan, more than any other, spoke for China during much of its history. China was a proud and isolationist region that opposed the planting of Christianity on its soil. Attempts were made, but without success. Nestorians who traveled overland from Syria during the sixth century were the first known Christian missionaries to China. Their influence began to decrease by the thirteenth century when the first Roman Catholic missionary, Friar John, arrived. He found considerable freedom to preach under the protection of the Mongols who were then ruling China, and thousands were baptized. During the fourteenth century, when the Ming Dynasty came to power, however, missionaries were expelled. Not until the end of the sixteenth century did Christianity actually gain a permanent foothold in China, and it was an Italian Jesuit, Matthew Ricci, who “became and has ever remained the most respected foreign figure in Chinese literature who was most responsible for that breakthrough.”51
Ricci was born in 1522, the year of Xavier’s death. His father was an Italian aristocrat who sent him to Rome to study law. While there, however, young Ricci fell under the influence of the Jesuits, and after three years he turned away from his pursuit of a secular career and entered the Jesuit order. So distressed was his father when he heard the news that he left immediately for Rome to rescue his son. On the way, he became violently ill and was unable to go on. Fearing this was a sign of God’s anger, he returned home. Ricci’s acceptance into the Society of Jesus did not signal an end to his secular studies. He went on to study under a leading mathematician of his day, acquiring an education that later opened a door for him among the literati of China.
Accompanied by thirteen other missionaries, Ricci was assigned first to Goa, where Xavier had begun his missionary career. Like Xavier, they baptized and trained children, a ministry to which Ricci did not feel uniquely called. But after four years in India, he “received the marching orders for which he had been praying so long.”52 He was soon on his way to the Portuguese port city of Macao on the coast of China. His friend Ruggieri had gone there earlier; and even though he was depressed and hopelessly bogged down in language study, Ricci sailed for his new post with anticipation.
His arrival in China signaled the breakthrough that had long been awaited. Though missionaries had for some time resided in Macao, entering China proper had not been permitted. But when word of his expertise in such fields as mathematics, astronomy, and geography reached Wang P’an, the governor of Shiuhing, he invited Ruggieri and Ricci to come and live in his province. Though they initially feared the invitation might be a ploy to kill them, they accepted the risk and went. It was not a trick, however, and Ricci quickly demonstrated the value of his secular learning in foreign missionary work. With him he brought a supply of mechanical gadgets, including clocks, musical instruments, and astronomical and navigational devices as well as books, paintings, and maps—all of which drew widespread interest from scholars. The maps were particularly intriguing for these men who had previously refused to believe that the world consisted of more than China and her immediate neighbors.
Ricci’s primary aim was not to bring Western learning, but to bring the gospel. To make that point, both he and Ruggieri shaved their heads and took on the garb of Buddhist monks. After only two years there were converts, and the two missionaries dedicated a small church and private residence that they had built with the help of Chinese labor. In 1588, five years after they entered China proper, Ruggieri returned to Europe, and Ricci was left in charge of the work with several other Jesuits.
Before he left China, Father Ruggieri had become the focus of a sex scandal. A Chinese convert accused him of committing adultery with a married woman, whose husband concurred with the charge. “This was a classic case of shakedown,” writes Jonathan Spence, “and Ruggieri was able to clear his name.” Other priests faced similar accusations in this hostile climate where sexual promiscuity was commonplace. “Such rumors were constantly fanned by the Chinese, who staged plays on market days in the little towns, mocking the Christians and the Portuguese, who kept their swords and rosaries in action at the same time, and let their priests mix indiscriminately with local women. These plays were reinforced by comic prints attacking the Jesuits and their converts, which enjoyed a brisk sale.”53
In the meantime Ricci changed his attire to that of a Confucian scholar. Confucianism was the religion of the Chinese intelligentsia, and Ricci was focusing his attention on that segment of the population. If the Chinese could view Confucianism as merely a philosophy, he reasoned, then they could accept Christianity as well and not be forsaking their traditional beliefs.
While he was seeking to contextualize Christianity in China, another Jesuit missionary, Robert de Nobili, was doing the same thing in India—in essence, becoming a Brahmin to reach that caste for Christ. He observed the laws and wore the clothes of the Brahmin caste, and he disassociated himself from the existing Christian church—not, however, without a barrage of criticism. Both he and Ricci were highly controversial figures within Roman Catholicism.
Ricci’s effort to make Confucianism compatible with Christianity appealed to the Chinese and paved the way for conversions. But critics insisted that he was not being true to the basic tenets of Christianity. For the name for God, for instance, he used the term Lord of Heaven (T’ien for heaven and Shang-Ti for sovereign lord) from the ancient classics. Likewise, Ricci did not insist that converts abandon ceremonies honoring ancestors. He argued that such traditions only indicated a healthy respect for deceased family members.
Not surprisingly, his methods came under fire almost immediately, especially from competing orders, the Dominicans and Franciscans. Jesuits had maintained a virtual monopoly on spreading Catholicism in China for a number of years, and the other two orders were quick to find fault. By the early seventeenth century the issue had blown up into what became known as the Chinese Rites Controversy, probably the most heated debate ever to confront Roman Catholic missions. Papal pronouncements generally took the side of the Dominicans and Franciscans, forbidding Christians to sacrifice to Confucius or to their ancestors. The Chinese emperor, on the other hand, took the side of the Jesuits, threatening to expel those who opposed ancestor worship. The controversy raged for centuries without being fully resolved.
In defense of Ricci, it should be noted that he had not sought controversy, and his leniency toward Confucianists may have been influenced by the intellectuals with whom he associated. “It is conceivable,” writes A. J. Broomhall, “that to them the ceremonial, civic and political aspects of these rites could have been distinct from the religious and superstitious, but not to the average Chinese with his animistic beliefs.”54
For Ricci himself, the acceptance of Confucianist ideas came naturally. As he studied and translated the Chinese classics, he developed great respect for what this ancient culture had to offer. He dismissed the doctrine of the tabula rasa—the belief that non-Christian philosophies and religions must be entirely eradicated before Christianity can be effectively introduced. Such also was the conclusion of Xavier after he came in contact with the Japanese and their highly developed culture. Earlier, in India, he had sought to debunk non-Christian systems and had little success. The policy of accommodation thus became a pattern for the Jesuits, and the debates have continued to the present day. It was a pattern of contextualizing the gospel that was viewed by some as syncretism—a heretical mix of Christian and non-Christian beliefs.
Ricci’s great respect for the Chinese people and his eagerness to share his scientific knowledge with them brought him unusual opportunities that have been accorded few other foreigners before or since. In 1601, at the invitation of Wan Li, he was permitted to locate in Peking and continue his mission work near the emperor’s palace, while living on a stipend from the imperial government. With him he brought a large striking clock that he presented to the emperor, and he and his fellow priests became the official clock-winders of the imperial court. “When enemies tried to oust him,” writes Broomhall, “the powerful palace eunuchs were afraid they could not keep it going and saw to it that Ricci was not expelled.”55 “It is a miracle of the omnipotent hand of the Most High,” wrote Ricci, and “the miracle appears all the greater in that not only do we dwell in Peking, but we enjoy here an incontestable authority.”56
Ricci ministered in Peking until he died in 1611, nearly ten years after he arrived in that city. During that time a significant number of scholars and government officials professed faith in Christ, among them Paul Hsü, one of China’s leading intellectuals and a member of the Imperial Academy. His faith was real, and he passed it on to his children who kept it alive for generations. His daughter devoted her time to training professional storytellers to take the gospel out into the villages. Two other female descendants of Paul became famous through their marriages—one became Madame Sun Yat-sen, and the other, Madame Chiang Kai-shek. Though the number of Chinese converts at the time of Ricci’s death (some two thousand) was miniscule in comparison to China’s vast population, their influence was far greater because of their high status in society, and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Christianity continued to grow, despite periodic outbreaks of violent persecution. During the half-century following Ricci’s death, the church increased a hundredfold.
Ricci was above all else a faithful Roman Catholic, as were his converts. In his journal, he writes of Paul Hsü bowing “before the statue of the Blessed Virgin” before he entered the residence of one of the Jesuit priests and how, after he was baptized, “he attended the sacrifice of the Mass every day” and “found a great consolation in going to confession.”57 Amid the ritual was the gospel message, and according to Broomhall, “much pure doctrine was taught, whatever else was added.”58
One pamphlet on God written by a Jesuit priest during this period was widely circulated in the provinces and later used by Protestant missionaries, and it was just such literature that kept the message alive following a 1724 edict that expelled the missionaries and forced the Chinese Christians to worship in secret.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Cronin, Vincent. The Wise Man from the West. New York: Dutton, 1955.
Cuming, G. J., ed. The Mission of the Church and the Propagation of the Faith. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
De Vaulx, Bernard. History of the Missions. New York: Hawthorn, 1961.
Edman, V. Raymond. The Light in Dark Ages. Wheaton, IL: Van Kampen, 1949.
Greenaway, George William. Saint Boniface. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1955.
Gutierrez, Gustavo. Las Casas: In Search of the Poor of Jesus Christ. Translated by Robert R. Barr. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993.
Sladden, John Cyril. Boniface of Devon: Apostle of Germany. Exeter, England: Paternoster Press, 1980.
Spence, Jonathan. The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. New York: Viking, 1984.
Xavier, Francis. The Letters and Instructions of Francis Xavier. Translated and introduced by M. Joseph Costelloe. St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1992.
Zwemer, Samuel M. Raymond Lull: First Missionary to the Moslems. New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1902.