When they returned to Ricci’s study, Ai T’ien said, “I have never before seen a painting of Rebecca with Jacob and Esau.”
From whom could a Chinese have learned those names? Ricci tried to hide his astonishment. “The painting above the altar?” Ai T’ien nodded. “That shows the Virgin with the Christ Child and John the Baptist.” This time it was Ai T’ien who showed surprise. “How did you come to hear of us?” Ricci continued.
“I was reading a book entitled Strange Forest, by Chih Yün-chien, the layman from the slope of plum trees. He describes you as having a high brow, deep-set eyes, a rosy complexion and a grey beard. From that I thought you were a Mohammedan, but later he said you did not profess their creed, but adored only the King of Heaven. It was obvious then that we were of the same persuasion.”
“What is your sect called?” asked Ricci.
“We are called ‘men who cut the sinews of the flesh we eat.’”
Memories of a passage in Genesis came back: “Therefore the children of Israel eat not of the sinew which shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day.” Ricci looked at his visitor’s nose. “Are you perhaps a Jew?”
Ai T’ien’s face remained impassive. “I have never heard that name,” he replied.
Ricci thought a moment, then fetched the first volume of the Plantin Bible. Opening it beside Ai T’ien, he pointed to the Hebrew text, which his visitor studied.
“That is the language of our holy books.”
“Then you are a Jew,” said Ricci. “Perhaps you call yourself differently: Hebrew? Israelite?”
His visitor smiled in recognition. “It is true that we call ourselves Israelites, but no one else in the Middle Kingdom refers to us by that name.”
Ricci learned that Ai was born in Honan province and now lived in Kaifeng, its capital. Eight families of Jews dwelt there with a fine synagogue recently rebuilt after a fire at a cost of ten thousand taels. Here they kept the Pentateuch written on parchment and rolled up in five parts, each kept in a kind of small tent covered with silk, within the sanctuary. The Jews turned towards the West when they prayed and addressed God by several names, including Heaven, Supreme Lord, and Governor of All Things. They ate unleavened bread at Easter and celebrated their liturgical feasts.
Ricci listened with growing astonishment. “How long have your families lived at Kaifeng?” he asked.
“The first synagogue was erected almost five hundred years ago. I think our ancestors travelled from India about that time. Traders they were. But now we have become a very small sect. At Hangchow there is another colony with their synagogue and elsewhere a few scattered families.” He lowered his eyes. “Gradually we are dying out.”
“It is strange I never heard of you before,” said Ricci. “I have studied the dynastic histories and found no mention of your sect.”
“There is good reason for that,” replied Ai. “We are grouped with the cursed Mohammedans. The people of this country, judging only by appearances, see that both sects abstain from pork. As there are perhaps a million Mohammedans in the Middle Kingdom, and a handful of Israelites, it is we who are given their name.”
Ricci began to understand. He had met occasional Chinese Mohammedans: they had entered the country during the Mongol dynasty and lived as Chinese, holding office, but most practised no form of their religion except abstinence from pork.
Now is my chance, thought Ricci, to solve a long-standing problem. Some years ago he had heard that in Shansi province, near the Great Wall, lived a tiny sect called Adorers of the Cross. What he had learned indicated one of the myriad varieties of Buddhism—some rare species of flower evolved in a distant mountain valley—but there was, perhaps, a more satisfactory explanation: that this sect comprised descendants of foreign Christians who had once lived in Peking.
If, as Ricci had for many years believed, Marco Polo’s Cathay was another name for China, and Cambaluc an older name for Peking, then the Nestorian Christians in Cambaluc attested by Marco Polo, and about which Chinese annals, tradition and contemporary books were suspiciously silent, might have been a foreign community, consisting of occupying troops recruited from Christendom (for the Khan’s empire extended to Armenia and Hungary).
The presence of Christians in Cambaluc had been independently recorded by the Franciscan legates dispatched to secure an alliance with the Great Khan. In the thirteenth century John of Piano Carpini, an Italian friar and one of St. Francis’s first companions, had made the journey to Cambaluc, the first European to reach the Far East overland. He met with no success and was sent back by the Khan with an insolent letter to the Pope. Several other friars in succeeding years also failed to secure the alliance. Another Franciscan, John of Montecorvino, who travelled by sea, converted some of the Nestorian Christians, who enjoyed favour at the Khan’s court, to Catholicism. He was joined in 1313 by three others of his order, who consecrated Montecorvino Archbishop. His successor, John of Marignolli, who arrived with thirty friars, presented the Khan with a magnificent horse from the Pope, but was soon compelled to leave by the first signs of that revolution which heralded the Ming dynasty. Thereafter Franciscan zeal for the East died out. It was no longer possible to travel there by land, and the overthrow of the foreign dynasty had been followed by intense xenophobia. But for over three-quarters of a century the Franciscans had been established, not as missionaries to Cathay but as chaplains to Christians at the cosmopolitan court of Cambaluc. The friars did not learn the language of Cathay; like the majority of their flock they spoke Uigur, the Tartar tongue, in which Mass was celebrated according to the Latin rite.
It was possible that when the Khan’s empire collapsed the Christian religion had been identified with foreign conquest and those who professed it expelled by the new Ming dynasty. But Ricci found it inconceivable that they should have left no trace of descendants and, on the assumption that all references to Cambaluc were references to Peking, had long been searching for tell-tale signs—with no more success than the hearsay mention of a curious sect at Shansi.
He now put his important question to the Jew. “Have you heard, anywhere in the Middle Kingdom, of the existence of Christians?” But the word meant nothing to Ai. Not for the first time Ricci was reduced to the rock-bed of visible definition. Producing a crucifix, he explained the elements on Christianity. To Ricci’s extreme surprise, the visitor said, “So you are an Adorer of the Cross, Doctor Li! In my own city of Kaifeng there were certain strangers who practised that religion. There were others, I think, in Lintsing and Shansi.”
“What do you know about them?”
“Very little,” replied the Jew, “except that they recite prayers from our holy books.” That might be the psalter, Ricci thought. “But most of them have given up their religion. The Mohammedans hated them because they were brave and warlike, so they roused the mandarins against them. Most became either Mohammedans or Buddhists. Their church at Kaifeng was turned into a pagoda dedicated to the god of war.”
“When did the persecution take place?”
“I should say some fifty years ago.”
Ricci was puzzled. Were the Adorers of the Cross descendants of Georgians and Armenians in the Mongol armies? Or travellers from the Middle East? Or an even more primitive sect founded by the apostle Bartholomew, who, some claimed, had come to the Far East? “Do you know why they adored the Cross?” asked Ricci.
The Jew spread his hands. “They themselves did not know. They simply retained an old custom—making a cross in the air with their finger over food and drink.”
Ricci asked the Jew to write down the names of the Christian families at Kaifeng: they numbered six. He also learned the Chinese name for the sect. Just as Mohammedans were “men who do not eat pork” and Jews “men who do not eat sinews,” the descendants of Christians were “men who do not eat animals with a round hoof”—because, while Saracens and Chinese had no scruples about those foods, the Christians evidently abstained from flesh of horse and mule.
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br /> Ricci then questioned the Jew about the Old Testament. Ai recited many stories about Abraham, Judith, Mardochai and Esther, using forms of proper names which struck Ricci as strange: Hierosuloim for Jerusalem, Moscia for Messiah. He told Ricci that in Kaifeng many of the Israelites knew Hebrew.
“My brothers are well versed in the language, but I cannot read a word. In fact, when I took my degree I was driven out of the synagogue. You see, it is impossible to practise purifications and refrain from pork while holding an official position. I was obliged, for my work, to give up those formalities. But the tie remains. If I were a doctor of letters,” he added regretfully, “I should have the authority to withstand the rabbis and break it altogether.”
Ricci was well pleased with this news and later sent Brother Anthony, a young Chinese, to Kaifeng to discover what language and holy pictures the Christians used. He and his companion, a Christian doctor of letters from Honan province, were more warmly welcomed by the Jews than by the supposed Christians. They refused to admit they were related to Adorers of the Cross, either out of fear of persecution or shame at being considered of foreign extraction (although that was clear enough from their faces), since the Chinese considered foreign blood a great dishonour. However, Brother Anthony gathered that their ancestors, Christians of the Greek rite, had come to China five centuries before with the conquering Mongols and, living outside the capital, has not been converted to Catholicism by the Franciscans of the fourteenth century.
Ricci was disappointed that the link had been broken, that the only vestiges of a once flourishing Christian community, numbering tens of thousands, should be a superstitious attitude towards horse-flesh—sign of their European origin—and a gesture before eating. The cross could lose its meaning. Survival was not guaranteed. On the contrary, a minority religion in this alien land would, if cut off for centuries at a time from the main stream, inevitably languish and die. China had assimilated larger bodies by sheer mass—even the Mongol conquerors. At all costs, therefore, the link with Rome must be safeguarded. Xenophobia must be opposed as implacably as Buddhism.
On the same journey Anthony delivered a letter from Ricci to the ruler of the synagogue, saying that in Peking he possessed all the books of the Old Testament, and also the New, which treated of the Messiah’s coming into the world. The rabbi replied that that was impossible, for the Messiah would not appear for ten thousand years. However, having heard of Ricci’s learning, the community sent a second message: “If you will come and live with us and abstain from pork, we will make you ruler of our synagogue.”
At Ricci’s request Anthony made copies of the first and last sentences of their Pentateuch. Comparing them with the Plantin Bible, Ricci found that they exactly corresponded, but the Jewish book was written in the ancient fashion, without the marks which indicated vowels.
The visit of T’ien the Jew occurred in June. Later that same summer Ricci made permanent the residence in Peking. During the previous four years they had been living in rented houses, with great inconvenience, without a proper chapel, changing four or five times, never finding one that suited their needs. So many carracks were lost during those years that Macao could not furnish the six hundred taels necessary to purchase a house. Ricci decided to wait no longer. Finding one with forty rooms in the centre of the city at a reasonable price, he spoke to his friends, especially to Paul Hsü; they all agreed to lend the necessary money themselves or obtain loans at low interest. Three days later Ricci bought the house, turning the largest room into a chapel.
At Peking there were now three missionary priests, Ricci, Pantoja and the recently arrived Portuguese, two Chinese ready to begin their novitiate, two candidates for the Society and nine servants. Peking counted over two hundred Christians, China well over a thousand. The numbers were not very great, but all had been chosen carefully and well instructed. Ricci preferred to have a few good converts than thousands of imperfect ones, for at that early stage the bad example of a single individual could undo the work of years. Moreover, the missions were still hampered by shortage of priests, and requests to open houses in other cities had to be refused. The twelve missionaries under Ricci were barely sufficient to look after the four communities and the Chinese novices.
The supply of priests had been kept constant by Valignano, who had recently returned from Japan to Macao. From there he wrote a letter to the General pointing out that for twenty-one years, as Visitor and Provincial, he had been in charge of the countries included in the provinces of India or Japan. Now he felt his strength failing and asked to be allowed to spend his few remaining years in prayer, free from office. While awaiting an answer he devoted his energies to the China mission, and proposed to visit in person all the houses. Ricci was delighted at the news, and Paul Hsü arranged for letters of introduction and a passport granting travel at public expense. Valignano had written to Japan for presents and was awaiting the return of the ship in February or March 1606. He intended to leave at each mission house a thousand taels, the income from which would ensure financial independence from Macao, for relations with the Portuguese enclave still aroused the greatest suspicion. Amidst these arrangements he fell ill of uraemia and after nine days’ suffering, during which he spoke repeatedly of China, Valignano died. The date was January the twentieth; his age sixty-six.
When he had disembarked at Goa in 1574, Japan had only twenty European Jesuits and a single indigenous one, while the gates of China remained barred. At his death, Japan boasted a hundred and thirty missionaries, and over a quarter of a million Christians. He had founded two flourishing colleges and started two smaller ones, a novitiate and two seminaries for Japanese, a score of houses and three hundred churches or chapels. For some thirty years he had bestridden Asia from the Indian Ocean to the China Sea like a new colossus. Through typhoon and plague, tropical heat and monsoon, with inadequate supplies of men and money, he had travelled unceasingly, building, strengthening, organising, encouraging. All who knew the Visitor considered him a great man, worthy to rank with Xavier. At the news of their loss, mourning was worn from Mozambique to Nagasaki, from the Mogul’s court to Malacca. None felt his death more than Ricci. Valignano had been father not only to the mission, but to himself, since that first day when he had opened the door of the novitiate in Rome and put the questions which had changed his life. For twenty-three years they had worked together, firmly agreed, in an age which viewed such ideas with suspicion, that Christianity must put up her sword and approach the peoples of the East in all humility, that her priests must learn in order to teach, that the Society must open its ranks to Oriental converts. In Ricci’s opinion, Valignano’s death had orphaned all the missionaries in China.
The future of the mission was still further jeopardised by a second loss. Ricci had sent Brother Francis, one of the two first Chinese Jesuits, to accompany the Visitor on his tour. While staying in the house of a Christian family at Canton he contracted malaria. The city, indeed the whole province, was in turmoil, for some weeks earlier reports that Spaniards had slaughtered 20,000 Chinese in the Philippines had coincided with the building at Macao of extensive Portuguese fortifications against increasingly daring Dutch corsairs. Rumour spread that the Portuguese, Dutch and Japanese were uniting to massacre the Chinese of Macao, invade Kwangtung province, seize the whole country and make one of the Jesuits Emperor. In terror, all the Chinese of the enclave had fled to Canton, where the Haitao, as a defensive measure, ordered houses outside the city walls, several thousand in number, to be pulled down. By February, no foreign attack having been launched, the owners were complaining furiously that the demolition had been unnecessary. A renegade Christian, aware of the mandarins’ dilemma, informed them of Brother Francis’s presence and accused him of smuggling arquebuses to Macao. It had become essential to find a scapegoat. When his tonsure was discovered, Brother Francis was twice given the bastinado. Already tubercular and greatly weakened by malaria, he collapsed under the blows. He was hurried back towards prison but in
the streets of Canton, on a table improvised as a stretcher, he died.
Letters from Longobardo and memorials to the court reported the tragedy to Ricci act by act when it had already been played. His own experience in Shiuhing had shown that, despite all precautions, such incidents were unavoidable: as long as an enclave existed, missionaries would be accused of spying for an imperialist power. He loved Francis—who he had hoped would be one of the first Chinese priests—yet could not regret a death which approached so closely to martyrdom. Increasingly now he prayed—and asked his friends to pray—that he might shed his blood as Francis had done. But in fact enemies had never been fewer, the externals of life never so smooth. He continued to maintain his prestige, which alone could protect the three less sheltered houses. Since the key mandarins in those provinces were continually changing, each time they visited Peking Ricci had to strengthen friendships or make them anew. The other strands in his present life were the instruction of new Christians, sermons on Sundays and feast-days, his own writing, Chinese lessons to his colleagues and lessons in philosophy and mathematics to graduates. For three or four hours every day Paul Hsü worked with him at the translation of Euclid’s first six books, together with other minor mathematical works. Ricci translated orally while Hsü transcribed. Hsü, who showed a great aptitude for mathematics, wanted to translate the whole of Euclid, but Ricci explained that the later books, being beyond most Chinese, would not further their apostolic work. Only two of Ricci’s friends—Paul Hsü and Li Chih-tsao the geographer—could fully master Euclid, and the first six books, published in the spring of 1607, were more admired than understood. Chinese pride was somewhat abased: even the greatest minds in Peking had to admit that they were unable to grasp a book in their own language.
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