Realization that the growing influence of the taijian threatened to undermine the stability of the state prompted the first Ming emperor, Hongwu, to prohibit their education and to make any interference on their part in government affairs punishable by beheading. His orders were disregarded, however, and a palace school reserved exclusively for eunuchs was founded in 1426. The best students were allowed to continue their studies to levels of learning on a par with the Confucian literati, and those who reached the highest positions were capable of drafting notes for the emperor in an impeccable style fully comparable with the unsurpassable productions of the grand secretaries and the members of the Hanlin Academy.
The niche that the eunuchs had carved out for themselves constituted a contradiction within the state, whose official Confucian ideology envisaged no role for them other than that of palace servants. In actual fact, they now held key positions in the court, the provincial administration, the army, and the secret police. They were in charge of collecting duties and taxes, they managed state industries and controlled entire sectors of commerce, and they were employed as envoys on missions of foreign policy. They had also become the only channel for the transmission of memorials to the court, which gave them enormous power over even the most important government officials. Without drastic intervention on the part of the emperor, which was highly unlikely, it was now impossible to curb their ambitions, especially as they were not subject to investigation by the censors, as state officials were.
The history of the Ming dynasty was full of examples of powerful and corrupt eunuchs manipulating emperors of weak character, and everyone knew that Wanli was more of a puppet than any previous ruler. As Ricci learned, isolated officials had endeavored to rebel against the eunuch’s excesses many times in the history of the dynasty, even at the cost of their lives, but their efforts always ended in failure. The unchallenged power of the emperor’s private bureaucracy constituted one of the greatest political problems of the Chinese empire in the late Ming era.
A Chinese Name for Europe:
The Second Edition of the Map of the World
Lazzaro Cattaneo and his companions arrived in Nanjing without incident in May 1599, and Ricci set about finding a house for sale. The search proved harder than expected, but then, as luck would have it, a somewhat unusual transaction was proposed by Liu Douxu, the orthodox Confucian scholar who had clashed with Li Ruzhen. Having built himself a large house three years earlier in strict accordance with the geomancers’ indications, he nevertheless found that it was haunted by evil spirits. Exorcism by Taoist monks, who endeavored to dislodge the unwelcome guests by slashing the walls with sharp swords, proved completely ineffective. The ghosts were still there, and everyone attempting to stay even one night in the house ended up fleeing in terror. Liu Douxu offered Ricci the property at half price, pointing out that the virtuous Xitai could certainly count on the aid of his god, the Lord of Heaven, to defeat the forces of evil.
This excellent piece of business was transacted in just three days. The building was spacious, located on a hill offering protection from the recurrent floods, and had enough rooms to accommodate Ricci, Lazzaro Cattaneo, Sebastião Fernandes, Manuel Pereira, the servants, and the new converts. The Jesuits took the precaution of sprinkling all the rooms with holy water on moving in, but no hostile spirit came to trouble them that night or any other. Pleased to show that the missionaries were immune to local demonic influences, Ricci had the governor’s edict confirming the Jesuits’ permission to reside in Nanjing and ownership of the property hung in the entrance.
After taking up residence, the missionaries allowed themselves to be persuaded to place the gifts for the emperor on display to the local dignitaries in one room. The influx of visitors was far greater than expected and soon swelled to the proportions of an authentic invasion, with people pouring in at every hour of the day to admire the products of another culture, entranced by the prisms emitting beams of colored light and the magic of the mechanical clocks. The “bells that rang by themselves” so captivated the Chinese imagination that Ricci became a sort of patron saint of clockmakers after his death and was remembered in this role as a minor divinity at least until the early years of the twentieth century, when some clock sellers still hung his portrait in their shops.
The paintings also caused astonishment for their use of oil paints, the extraordinary realism of the faces, and the sense of depth obtained through the technique of perspective. This wonder was justified because ink was used for most of the painting in China, the techniques were different from those in Europe, and the art of portraiture had developed above all in the context of the cult of the ancestors to produce images of the deceased for display on altars. Moreover, various types of perspective were used in the same painting rather than the single linear perspective of Europe. Little importance was attached to showing the direction of the light or reducing the size of distant objects with respect to those in the foreground. In some typically Chinese paintings, where the painter was capable of capturing minute details of nature such as the beating of a bird’s wings or the darting of a fish in a pond, rendering the idea of movement in a few delicate strokes, the background was omitted entirely. Ricci was insensitive to the peculiar beauty of Chinese painting: “They do not know how to paint in oils or to give shadows to the things they paint, and so all their pictures are dull and lifeless.”6
Worn out after days of constant visits going on until late in the evening, Ricci decided to move the gifts to the house of the censor Zhu Shilin and to send the two clocks to Nanchang until it was time to take them to Beijing. Even in the absence of these objects, however, the visitors continued to pour in. The exhausted Jesuit wrote to Girolamo Costa in the only surviving letter of the Nanjing period, dated August 14, 1599, complaining that he often found no time to eat because of all the people he had to receive: “They flock to see me like lunatics.”7 Some wanted to ask Li Madou for mathematical explanations, and others to discuss moral questions. Wizards came knocking every so often to talk about alchemy. Many who had read or heard about the treatise on friendship asked Ricci about the customs and way of life in the “Far West,” and he took advantage of this to paint an idyllic picture of Europe as a peaceful country free of conflict, where the Christian religion was practiced, the poor and needy were taken care of, and the moral virtues were practiced, and where it was the custom to take just one wife and remain together all through life.
The missionary’s carefully edited account omitted all mention of the wars that soaked the European continent in blood, the plagues and famines that decimated nations, the rift between Catholics and Protestants, the widespread violence and injustice at all levels of society, and the ruthless crushing of all those who dared to challenge the dominant culture, such as Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake in 1600 for refusing to recant his beliefs. When Ricci talked about the pope, how he was elected by the assembly of cardinals, the role he played, and how he was honored by the faithful, his listeners were astonished. They could not understand how it was possible for the authority of a sovereign other than the emperor to be recognized or for a religion independent of the temporal power to exist. In China, the Son of Heaven was the absolute authority in both the political and the spiritual field, and he supervised the rituals of popular worship. Even a structured and organized religion like Buddhism was only tolerated because it was integrated into the social and political structure and was strictly subordinate to state control. Great importance was attached throughout Chinese history to combating the proliferation of uncontrolled cults and unorthodox sects, which were regarded as a threat to the established order.
Some of the visitors were familiar with Ricci’s planisphere because they had been able to examine copies or because they had seen it cited and reproduced in works by Chinese authors. One of the most famous of these was the “universal map of the countless countries of the world, with an outline of past and present events” produced in 1593 b
y the well-known shidafu Liang Zhou, who presented Ricci’s work with these flattering words: “I recently saw the map of Li Madou with his notes . . . and became aware for the first time of the immensity of the heavens and the earth.”8 Those impressed by the Jesuit’s knowledge of geography included an important official at the Nanjing ministry of personnel named Wu Zhongming but better known as Wu Zuohai, who suggested that he should produce a new and expanded version of the map and asked for permission to use the engraved wood blocks to make copies for friends.
Ricci gladly agreed and drew a new map of the world divided into panels, which was printed in 16009 with a preface by Wu Zuohai as the Shanhai yudi quantu (“Complete Map of the Mountains and Seas”), the same title as the previous edition. Twice the size of the one drawn in Zhaoqing in 1584, it contained various new toponyms. For the first time, there was a name for Europe (Ou-lo-ba) and one for France, but still no Chinese name for Italy.
As mentioned above, the value of Ricci’s map lay in its presentation of the five continents. From a strictly technical standpoint, however, not all of the characteristics of his geographic works were innovations for the Chinese, who had themselves produced many of excellent quality. Good maps indicating the level of the terrain with respect to a horizontal plane were already in use in China as early as the Tang era in the eighth century, when the measurement of degrees of latitude was also known. The earliest surviving examples of Chinese cartography are two maps carved on a stone in 1136, during the Song era, and now in the Shaanxi Provincial Museum, Xi’an, namely the Yujitu (“Map of the Tracks of Yu”) and the Huayitu (“Map of China and the Barbarian Countries”), a very detailed map of the world showing over five hundred named localities, thirteen rivers with their tributaries, and four mountain ranges.
The two works, in which China is represented graphically while other countries are only indicated with captions, use a grid system to pinpoint the different localities and are regarded by experts as far more technically advanced than European maps of the same period.10 The most famous Chinese cartographer was Zhu Siben, who lived in the Yuan era and produced the Yutu (“Terrestrial Map”). As reconstructed by historians on the basis of later reproductions, this atlas was influenced by Muslim, Persian, and Arabic cartographers, employed the grid system, and included maps of the Chinese provinces with the major rivers and sea lanes as well as some regions of Central Asia. Reprinted in 1555 as the Guangyutu (“Enlarged Atlas”), it appeared in successive revised editions until the nineteenth century.
It is, however, misleading to compare Chinese and European cartography solely on the basis of the techniques employed or the amount of data given, as they differed in terms of overall conception. While Europeans strove for the highest possible degree of topographical accuracy, describing the conformation of the terrain and the level of the land with respect to the horizontal plane and giving the altitudes of mountains, the Chinese concentrated above all on describing the appearance of the territory and devoted a great deal of space to written notes of a geographic, naturalistic, ethnographic, and geomantic character, as well as information of use for administrative purposes. Moreover, even though the earliest Chinese maps printed with wood blocks date back to the twelfth century, most of those from the Ming era were still drawn with the brush, were sometimes embellished with short poems and exercises in calligraphy, and displayed great attention to aesthetic considerations instead of the contemporary European focus on technical and quantitative aspects.
After careful examination of Chinese maps, Ricci decided in accordance with the strategy of cultural accommodation to adapt to the local style in order to present his message in the way most likely to please its intended targets. From the second edition on, he therefore included numerous annotations in the margins. In addition to disseminating elements of cosmography and geography, the written part also provided information about the duration of the day and night in the course of the year, the distance between the earth and the planets of the nine heavens, and descriptions of the climatic characteristics of different parts of the world.
The Nanjing edition enjoyed enormous success and circulation far beyond all expectations, numerous copies even being sent to Japan. Guo Qingluo, the governor of the central-southern province of Guizhou, produced a reduced version four years later with a preface celebrating Ricci’s complete integration into Chinese society: “Li Madou has lived in the Middle Kingdom for many years. He is no longer a foreigner but Chinese, because he belongs to China.”
The Journey to Beijing:
The Meeting with the Fearsome Ma Tang
While Ricci continued his intense social life and cultural exchanges with the shidafu without managing to make any converts among them, proselytism began to prove moderately successful in other social classes. The first to adopt the faith in Nanjing were a 70-year-old retired soldier that Ricci called Chin, who was baptized with the name of Paul and was known as Chin Paul by the missionaries, his firstborn son Martin, and other members of their family. Shortly after his conversion, Chin Paul handed over to Li Madou for burning baskets full of Buddhist and Taoist wooden idols that he had kept at home to protect the family. Instead of destroying them, the Jesuit sent them to Manuel Dias, the rector of the College of the Mother of God in Macao. As he wrote in his history of the mission, using one of the military metaphors of which the Society of Jesus was so fond, he considered them the “spoils of the first battle”11 won in Nanjing.
Even though the prospects for evangelization looked promising, Ricci knew that it was impossible to achieve the great numbers of converts obtained in a short time by Jesuit missions in various other parts of the world and expected of him by the religious authorities. As he wrote to Girolamo Costa, “There [in Rome] they would like news of some great conversion in China. You must know that I and all the others here dream of nothing else day and night. It is for this that we have left our native land, those dear to us and our friends, that we wear Chinese clothing and footgear, and that we do not speak or eat or drink or live at home other than after the Chinese fashion.”12 Ricci knew he would have to wait: “The time of our stay in China is not the time of harvest or even sowing but of clearing wild forests and fighting with the beasts and poisonous snakes that live in them.” Thinking of the future, he foresaw that his pioneering work would enable the missionaries following in his footsteps to obtain better results and claimed the recognition he felt was his due: “Others will come by God’s grace and write of conversions and the fervor of the Christians, but it must be known that it was first necessary to do what we are doing now and that we are entitled to most of the merit. . . . China is very different from other lands, and the people, being judicious and more inclined to learning than to warfare, are very intelligent. . . . There is no memory of any foreigner ever living here as we are now.”
Now forty-seven years old, Ricci was well aware of the difficulties still to be faced. Despite his exceptional energy that never ceased to surprise his companions, he felt sudden waves of fatigue at times, the ankle injured many years before was becoming more painful than usual, and it took more effort to carry out his normal obligations: “The trials of this arduous undertaking are such that I can hardly look forward to a long old age.” Every time he feared he might succumb to fatigue, however, he managed to pull himself together and continue his preparations for the journey to Beijing. It was becoming urgent to set off for the capital and secure delivery of the memorial drawn up in Nanchang, as there was some risk of the emperor being informed that a foreigner had gifts for him and ordering them to be delivered without granting the missionaries an audience.
Since the funds at his disposal were insufficient to finish paying for the house and cover the expense of the journey, Lazzaro Cattaneo was sent to Macao to ask for help, but he found the coffers of the Jesuit college empty when he got there. The silver earmarked for the missionaries in China had gone down with the ship bringing it from Japan. Well aware that the journey to Beiji
ng constituted the climax of seventeen years of work in China, Father Dias dispatched a courier to Nanjing with a bill of exchange and set about soliciting donations from the Portuguese merchants. Having taken delivery of another clock and a religious painting for the emperor, together with prisms, hourglasses, silk brocade, and precious books as gifts for the officials of the imperial court, Cattaneo returned to Nanjing in March 1600 with a 28-year-old Spanish Jesuit named Diego de Pantoja, initially assigned to the Japan mission but diverted to China with a view to the important mission in the capital.
It proved impossible to cash the bill of exchange, but the amount of silver raised in Macao was sufficient to cover expenses, and the missionaries concentrated on their preparations. Ricci decided to leave for Beijing with Pantoja and the Chinese lay brothers Sebastião Fernandes and Manuel Pereira. Cattaneo was to remain in Nanjing, where he would be joined by João da Rocha, while João Soerio was to move to Nanchang.
Knowing that the gifts for Wanli were his strongest card, Ricci decided to have the large clock, the showpiece of the collection, embellished by a team of local craftsmen highly skilled in wood carving and decoration. The results were perfection itself. The case of the clock now rested on a base supported by four columns, and the bells that struck the hours and quarter hours were placed in a dome on top of it. The wood was adorned with a pattern of dragons in relief against a background of yellow, red, blue, green, and gold. The dial had new hands in the shape of an eagle’s beak, and the hours were written in Chinese characters. It was a small masterpiece that would have aroused the admiration of Renaissance craftsmen.
Matteo Ricci Page 25