At dawn on the seventh of April, first day of the examination, armed with three brushes, inkpot, ink and paper, Paul approached the immense examination building, surrounded by high walls, characteristic edifice of every provincial capital. At the gate he was stripped and searched, even his inkpot being inspected for cribs. When the candidates, several thousand masters of arts, had assembled, the gates were sealed and a strong guard posted. The examiners, a Chancellor and an Academician, announced the themes for the seven essays to be written that day: three sentences chosen from the Four Books, compulsory for all, and four sentences from each of the other less important works which made up the nine Classics, every candidate specialising in only one of these subsidiary books. The scholars were then led to a central courtyard dominated by a building consisting of four thousand small hutches, each able to hold a man, a desk and a stool. In these the candidates were locked. A light meal had been laid out in the hutches, between which communication was impossible. All day long, in company with the most brilliant men of China, most aged between thirty and forty, but some with white hair, Paul toiled away in his tiny cell, spinning out of himself a cocoon of silken eloquence. Each essay must contain no more and no less than five hundred characters—even here number was king—and would be judged not only for orthodoxy but for style, since the written language stood for national unity. The final versions he wrote in a special book, putting at the end his own name and those of his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, together with his address. At dusk the enclosure was unlocked, the weary candidates stumbled out, to be stripped of their exquisite threads of thought by lean, sharp-eyed officials. They in turn handed the compositions to scribes who copied them in red ink into another book. The anonymous versions in red letters were finally presented to the examiners.
On the second day of the examination, Paul wrote essays on ancient history; on the last day, judgments in three legal cases. The examiners then chose the three hundred best groups of essays, which were compared with the originals to ascertain the successful names. The great day came; lists of the new aristocracy were published and Paul’s name was among them. He had attained the coveted rank of doctor of letters—to Ricci’s gratification no less than his own. Later a book giving the family and address of successful candidates would be published, together with the most notable compositions. Every year it would be revised in the light of promotions and degradations, for Paul was now linked by a fraternal bond to the other doctors of his year, and by a filial bond to the examiners, whom he would treat with reverential respect until their dying day.
So far the examination had been similar to that for the degree of master of arts. Now followed a distinctive feature. The three hundred successful candidates were marshalled in the palace, where each was obliged to deliver a short extemporaneous discourse on a set theme to decide the final classification on which depended the importance of their appointments.
As a result of this exacting test, Paul was ranked number 121, which meant that he must leave Peking for a provincial post. Ricci was disappointed for his friend’s sake and because in the capital so brilliant a convert would have proved an invaluable example. There was only one way to keep him there. Paul, Ricci decided, must sit another series of examinations, open only to doctors, for the Imperial Academy. Members of this college, the most highly esteemed men in China, did not hold official appointments. They composed the Emperor’s edicts, wrote official history, laws, statutes; most important in Ricci’s eyes, they taught the Emperor’s sons. Moreover, as they advanced in age and pomposity, they could earn large fees by writing pieces for special occasions; any thoughtless trifle signed by an Academician was deemed at the very lowest a most elegant, a most extraordinarily well-restrained piece of prose. The old men’s platitudes were applauded as the mature fruits of a lifetime, their doddering untruths construed as witty paradox, their effete mimicry hailed as proof of a living tradition.
Only with the greatest reluctance did Paul yield to Ricci. Competition was intense and the examination rigorous: over a period of three years a series of twenty-four papers gave the right to the same number of places. Paul, however, was placed so high in the first five that he could rest assured of success, and in June 1604 he was formally named Bachelor of the Academy. Renting a house close to Ricci’s he brought his wife and father, who was over seventy, to live with him. In his new position of authority he became the missionaries’ adviser and protector; as Ricci called him, a pillar of the Church. An ardent admirer of the Catechism, he believed that books were the sole means of spreading Christianity and continually pressed Ricci to write new ones, even copying down his sermons and circulating them in manuscript.
But there was little time for writing during 1604, a year when the chief magistrates came to pay triennial homage to the Emperor. About forty thousand crowded Peking, of whom three thousand were punished for some form of misdemeanour. Through Paul and other friends Ricci met the chief mandarins of Nanking, Nanchang and Shiuchow and commended the missionaries to their protection. Seeing Ricci honoured, maintained at public expense and allowed entrance to the palace, most were only too willing to oblige. Those who, either from Buddhist sympathies or xenophobia, remained resentful, dared not harm the missionaries in their province, knowing that Ricci was in a position to report the matter to a Minister and secure their dismissal.
That summer the rivers which gave China her beauty and wealth again proved her ruin. More than once in Shiuhing an April monsoon had heaved the nearby waters over their dykes to flood the mission house. Now the Pai Ho, swollen by very heavy rain, breached the capital walls and made shipwreck of whole streets of houses. Hundreds of people were drowned and even more lost their lives through the accompanying famine. Supplies were cut off and the Emperor distributed food from reserve granaries to the value of 200,000 taels, rice being sold cheaply and the poor given free meals. Infanticide, which every day, even in normal times, accounted for a score of girl babies being strangled and thrown into the canals by parents who hoped they would be reborn to riches, now assumed the proportions of mass murder, while older boys and girls were hawked for the price of a meal.
Still the swirling waters rose and swept away a civilisation which weeks before had seemed beyond challenge. The choice was no longer between the caerulean shade of damask and the mauve, but between high ground and low. Putting aside his purple silk and neat classical allusions, Ricci fought a way through the torrential streets to save stranded survivors and evacuate them to the unflooded mission. The more low-lying single-storeyed houses, like so many skiffs anchored on too short a chain, were one by one engulfed. The blazing sun made the metropolis a mortuary; plague broke out; Peking became a city of the dead and dying. All that summer, while the brown water pounded against improvised dykes, Ricci and his household tended the groaning sick, many of whom had been deserted by their family and friends.
By August the deluge had begun to subside and from the flooded plains emerged a second colleague for the Peking mission, a Portuguese of thirty-five, whom Ricci put in charge of three young Chinese entering on their novitiate. The newcomer’s journey from Macao had proved calamitous. First, he had been obliged to bribe the captain of his boat who, halfway, threatened to leave his baggage behind. Later, on the River Pal, the boat had been wrecked by heavy floods, fortunately while most of the passengers were ashore. The most precious possession, an eight-volume Bible, sent expressly for the mission by Cardinal di Santa Severina, and packed in a strong wooden crate, was picked up by sailors from a neighbouring ship, who, believing it to be of value, hid their salvage. The gallant Brother Sebastian had boarded their ship and forced them to open the case. Discovering books written in a foreign language, they were only too willing to hand over for a few coins a work which had cost seventy gold florins.
On the Feast of the Assumption, after Mass, the Bible was solemnly shown to the Christian community. A magnificent edition, published by Christopher Plantin at Antwerp and sponsored by King Philip II,
even in Europe the book excited wonder, where it was known as the “Orbis miraculum.” It had been four years in the press, a gestation which, it was hoped, would ensure an almost sybilline age, and the brood limited to some twelve hundred sets, destined for the eyes of kings. Rudolf Acquaviva had offered one to the Great Mogul at Agra; the present set, it was hoped, might penetrate the Forbidden City. The binding like a palace gate opened reluctantly to reveal strong folio pages, an enduring surface on which the well-formed words were arranged not only to impart their sense but choreographically. The Testament was danced out in four sets of costume, Hebrew, Chaldean, Greek and Latin, the New Testament in Greek, Latin and Syriac, every least accent, every hapax legomenon correct, so that the volumes gave an irresistible impression of recorded truth.
Though they could not spell out a word, the Christians were sure so beautiful a work must contain high doctrine. As they turned the gilded pages and the different languages were pointed out to them, it seemed that only Chinese was lacking to bring the work to perfection. “Will you translate it?” they begged Ricci. Looking down bleakly at the eight massive volumes—to compile a few Chinese pages took months of labour, and at that time he could scarcely find leisure to recite his office—Ricci excused himself, saying that he was too occupied, and that, for such a translation, special permission must be given by the Pope. Their absolute trust in his powers could be comical. He had been explaining that the Pope was not a hereditary prince, that a body of holy, learned men of mature age, dedicated from early youth to religion and bound by a vow of chastity, elected their most worthy member to be vicar on earth of the Lord of Heaven. His listeners nodded. They seemed to understand. Then someone exclaimed in all sincerity, “If you return to the Far West, Master Li, you will certainly be elected Pope.”
Though the Bible was saved, precious goods worth two hundred taels had foundered, including a consignment of wine for saying Mass, unobtainable in Peking. Ricci asked help from the southern capital; a cask was dispatched but it too was lost on the way, so that for a year they had to ration their supply strictly, using two ablutions of water. The Christian community was specially angry that a picture for their altar had been stolen by the sailors. One of Ricci’s friends, a doctor of letters, had the pilot and some of the crew arrested. Under torture, they confessed to having stolen a writing desk, which was recovered but found to contain little besides reliquaries. The friend wanted to prefer charges but, at Ricci’s request, he arranged for the sailors’ release.
Ricci, overjoyed with the polyglot Bible, hastened to write and thank its donor in Rome. Every summer without fail, four months before the carrack left Macao for India, he harvested the year’s memories in a score of letters which were both a testimony of friendship and an antidote to homesickness. Typhoons and Dutch warships rendered communication almost as difficult as with the Emperor: sometimes he had to wait nine years for an answer. More than once he wrote to friends no longer alive, and from a misinformed colleague received a notice of his father’s death ten years before the event. But few things gave Ricci such pleasure as those occasional letters from friends, masters and contemporaries, at the Roman College and Coimbra, from his first tutor, Father Bencivegni, and from his family. He read and re-read, seldom without tears in his eyes, the crumpled scraps of paper that had been blown half-way round the world.
In his replies he chose items of news in accordance with the interests of his correspondent, describing to his father the cheapness of pearls and musk which, carried overland from Tibet, commanded exorbitant prices in Italy; the plentiful supplies of rhubarb, which the Chinese used as a dye; and touching upon political and court affairs. Even from the far side of despair he had managed to compose cheerful letters, full of praise for such curiosities as Chinese boats or the disciplined hierarchy of magistrates. The progress of the mission he invariably described as a miracle in which his own efforts were unworthy of remark. Even at the height of success, quite naturally, without a trace of affectation, he continued to designate himself “minimo fratello,” “poveretto,” “figlio indegno,” and besought the help of his friends’ prayers. He wrote freely and with high praise of his colleagues, especially the Chinese Brothers, his particular favourites, but of his own state of mind he spoke seldom. “As for me, there’s nothing to say except that I am very happy—God be praised—and ready to suffer anything He may wish for the conversion of China through His grace.” He enjoyed quoting tags from Horace and Virgil—not without slip—for they brought back his days at the Roman College, which he never tired of recalling. His fondness for statistical truth he indulged in the form of frequent distances, bearings of towns, circumferences of city walls and numbers of baptised. And in every letter, even to colleagues he had not seen for thirty years, he showed the sincere, devoted affection which in Peking was winning him an ever-increasing circle of friends.
At the beginning of the following year, 1605, after a long period of tranquillity, there blew up another of those storms which Ricci believed always marked the voyage of St. Peter’s ship. Suspicious of progress without opposition, he found himself welcoming the new attack. It came from the Buddhists, who invoked the age-old custom whereby strangers offering gifts must be rewarded and escorted back to the frontier. As a result of memorials to this effect, court eunuchs hinted that Ricci and his brethren should accept official appointments, thus justifying the money they received. Ricci, however, knowing that this would arouse the envy of the graduates, refused the appointment and proposed to forgo the allowance: an offer which came to nothing. When further hostile memorials were presented, Ricci took bold action: he made known his intention of leaving the capital. As he expected, this silenced the opposition, for it was now well known that the Emperor wanted the graduate preachers to remain at court, though with what motives no one could say for certain. Probably the Emperor found them useful, for they continued to visit the palace regularly to keep the clocks in repair.
Lest he provoke further attacks, Ricci decided that his next publication should be more conciliatory to the Buddhists. The substance of their doctrine was contained in a Sutra called The Forty-two Paragraphs, traditionally held to have been compiled by the two Indians who introduced Buddhism in the first century of the Christian era. Ricci now published a book which he had written at Nanking under the title of Twenty-Five Sentences. Polemic was avoided, while Stoic arguments were turned to Christian ends: To be happy we must do what lies in our power, that is, what demands work, strength and determination, while remaining indifferent to what we cannot control, such as riches, honours, fame and long life. There can be no disgrace for the man who is content with his lot. When we are falsely accused, let us follow the example of Saint Francis of Assisi and recognise that we have many faults of which others know nothing. Above all we must preserve peace of mind and use things as though they do not belong to us. Man in this world is a guest whom the Lord of Heaven invites to the heavenly banquet.
To this book one of Ricci’s friends wrote a preface, claiming that Yu and Hsia, the two most learned disciples of Confucius, would have found no fault with its arguments. He challenged the reader to compare it with The Forty-two Paragraphs and judge which was the more conducive to right living.
Since Chinese books often boasted postfaces as well as prefaces, Paul Hsü the Academician wrote a few concluding words. “Some time ago, on returning from Mount Song in Honan, I saw a painting of the Lord of Heaven which had arrived by sea from Europe. I had already seen a copy of the map published by the Viceroy of Nanking and the Secretary to the Ministry of Public Appointments and knew of the existence of Li Ma-tou. I found him by chance in Nanking and, after a short conversation, realised that he was the most learned man in the whole world. Some time afterwards he arrived in Peking to offer gifts and lived in the Castle of Barbarians. After less than a month he was invited to dinner by the great mandarins. Later his fame spread throughout the Middle Kingdom and the wisest and most famous men went to visit him. . . . Amidst troubles and adver
sity, during conversation or at dinner, it is impossible to find in a thousand million of his words a single one contrary to the great principles of loyalty to the Emperor and filial piety, not one which does not bring peace of mind and strengthen the moral code. . . . In ancient times, the kiosk where the phoenixes built their nests was considered by the Court a precious object, ensuring peace and stability in the Empire. Today we have the True Man, learned and great, who brings our moral code to completion and protects our court; is he not a treasure even more precious? Let us praise him to the heights.”
chapter twelve
Adorers of the Cross
While Peking was still acclaiming the Twenty-Five Sentences which appeared in the spring of 1605, Ricci received a visit from a master of arts. He looked about sixty and the name on his visiting-book was Ai T’ien. He had a long face, full lips and an unusually large nose. When, after the customary ceremonies, they were seated, Ai said warmly, “We are members of the same religion, Doctor Li.” Ricci did not recognise him but believing that he had come from one of the southern houses, led his visitor into the chapel. For the octave of the feast of St. John the Baptist, there hung a painting of the Virgin with the Christ Child and the Precursor in adoration. Ai immediately knelt down and paid reverence. “I do not usually venerate pictures,” he whispered, “but I must pay reverence to these ancestors of mine.” Ricci was puzzled but said nothing. At each side of the chapel was a picture of one of the four evangelists; indicating them, the visitor asked, “Are these the twelve children of the lady above the altar?” Ricci, supposing that he was referring poetically to the twelve apostles, replied Yes, and again his visitor paid homage.
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