Heroic Leadership

by Chris Lowney

  With no one more qualified available, Schall the astronomer, mathematician, cannon maker, calendar reformer, and defense strategist became church architect and contractor.

  While the emperor relished his relationship with his surrogate mafa, many of Schall's colleagues saw Schall's increasing prominence in a different light. Successful though Schall was, and successful though his colleagues became riding on his coattails, he became a lightning rod. Whether out of resentment at his success or genuine concern over his compromised lifestyle (or some combination of both), Schall's colleagues began second-guessing his tactics. Some complained that his lifestyle contradicted Jesuit poverty. Given the perks of mandarin status, they were certainly right, albeit rather shortsighted. Others accused him of implicitly condoning superstitious practices, as Chinese customarily used his bureau's calendar to determine propitious days for weddings, travel, or other significant personal events. Many of the charges were petty, but as Schall became increasingly enmeshed at the imperial court, he gave even his supporters reason to worry. It was one thing for Schall to take the Shun-chih child emperor under his wing or to show up in the Jesuit community sporting brocade robes emblazoned with the golden crane symbol reserved for first-rank mandarins; it was quite something else when the celibate Schall informed his Jesuit colleagues that he had a grandson.

  Well, it could have been worse; at least it was his adopted grandson. Shun-chip, the emperor who had grown close to Schall in his youth, had pushed on the Jesuit the honor of accepting a grandson without obligating Schall to raise or support the child. Refusing would have been an affront to his powerful patron, not that Schall's input was invited. An imperial decree confirmed the adoption-but also gives a rare glimpse into Chinese feelings about the Jesuits. However Schall and his colleagues attempted to blend into the local culture, their lifestyle must have seemed puzzling and sad to their hosts:

  In view of the fact that T'ang Jo-wang [i.e., Schall] has taken a vow of chastity and lifelong celibacy and consequently like an exile must live sad, alone and without help, the emperor desired him to adopt a boy as his grandson.-.-.-. T'ang Jo-wang comes from a foreign land and has for many years served the empire. He is not married.-.-.-. Therefore his adopted grandson may be admitted to the college. We decree it so.12

  The wounded relations between Schall and a few of his colleagues festered, distracting them from fully exploiting their most promising opportunity in China. However narrow-minded his detractors, Schall's temperament didn't exactly promote a warm and speedy reconciliation. Schall was a man who didn't suffer fools, and from his lofty perch even talented colleagues sometimes seemed fools. A Jesuit investigating the charges against Schall reported that his personality exacerbated otherwise simple disagreements: "On the exterior a rather harsh man, very irascible and morose after the German fashion." 13 As the discord created an undercurrent of friction among the China team, the question of whether a Jesuit could accept leadership of the Calendar Bureau wound its way to the Vatican. Perhaps it was easier for the pope to assess the matter dispassionately. After all, he didn't have to eat dinner every night with the harsh, irascible, and morose Schall. In any event, papal authorities completely vindicated him: "In view of the manifest advantages for the propagation of the faith afforded by the post of official astronomer, the Holy Father grants all dispensations that may be required in order that members of the Society may accept it." 14

  Schall, the accused

  Whatever minor loss of momentum the Jesuits suffered from the intramural squabble was nothing compared to the fallout from the emperor Shun-chih's premature death at age twenty-four in 1661. It was the cue for Schall's court enemies to crawl out of the woodwork. Marginalized bureaucrats and court eunuchs, former Calendar Bureau members, xenophobes, and anti-Christians all rallied around the mandarin Yang Kuan-Hsien, who made himself the point person for the anti-Christian faction by publishing the diatribe "Refutation of the Noxious Doctrine."

  Unfortunately for the Jesuits, Schall, already more than seventy years old, suffered a paralyzing stroke as the controversy escalated. It further encouraged his enemies to press their attacks. Schall and three colleagues were paraded before the Board of Rites and jailed on a long list of charges, chief among them spreading false teachings and beliefs through China. As head of the Calendar Bureau, Schall was tagged with indirectly bringing about the emperor's premature passing-as they saw it, only inauspicious scheduling of the emperor's affairs and formal rituals could have caused such an untimely death, and Schall's calendar must have been the basis for such unfortunate scheduling. For their lesser offenses, Schall's three companions were caned and the full Jesuit company was banished from China. Schall's initial sentence of death by strangulation was overturned by magistrates who decided that the enormity of his crimes against the state merited the more exquisitely torturous ling ch'ih: piecemeal dismemberment, each new wound cauterized with a hot iron to minimize the blood loss-and prolong the torture.

  Schall had devoted a good part of his career-and had derived much of his successfrom studying the heavens. Now in one final, dramatic twist the heavenly portents intervened on Schall's behalf. A violent earthquake rocked Beijing the day Schall's death warrant was presented to the emperor. What sign could be clearer? Spooked and shaken (literally), magistrates and prosecutors quickly reconsidered his death sentence. Leniency suddenly seemed a better idea, and Schall was allowed to return to his residence.

  A violent earthquake rocked Beijing the day Schall's death warrant was presented to the emperor. What sign could be clearer?

  Stripped of all duties and titles, personally broken and suffering near total paralysis, Schall died within a year. The author of Divergences of European Astronomy from Chinese Astronomy, Treatise on the Telescope, History of Occidental Astronomers, and a handful of other Chinese-language treatises composed one last work before dying. This one was for a more limited audience. Schall dictated it to a Jesuit protege, and it was read to Schall's Jesuit colleagues in his presence:

  I present myself-.-.-. before this Community which represents for me the whole Society of Jesus. I am not going to defend myself as I did a few months ago in the courts, but rather to charge myself in full honesty and candour.-.-.-. In adopting my servant's son I was guilty of imprudence. I have caused scandal, and offended against brotherly love by word and by pen, especially among my colleagues in this city.15

  He cited other personal lapses before continuing:

  Lastly, I beg that no one takes this confession as an afterthought or as having been extorted by adversity; it was not indeed the fruit of my own thought but of the will of the merciful God who touches the hearts of men with gentleness and power at the times and in the manner which his providence and grace ordain.16

  He died soon after.

  A WHOLE LIFE, LIVED BY PRINCIPLES

  It may seem an odd final image of Jesuit leadership: Adam Schall on his deathbed, his fame and influence completely gone.

  Or perhaps it is a fitting image.

  Schall's deathbed reflections returned him to the Spiritual Exercises, which first molded his leadership vision. Loyola, their author, could not have envisioned Schall's unlikely life or the succession of impossible choices that tested him. But Loyola had understood that Jesuits immersed in a complex world would find themselves confronted with difficult choices. And so the Exercises buttressed each recruit's judgment with methods "of making a sound and good election"-that is, any important life choiceincluding a series of mental role-plays:

  I will imagine a person whom I have never seen or known. Desiring all perfection for him or her, I will consider what I would say in order to bring such a one to act and elect for the greater glory of God-.-.-. and the greater perfection of his or her soul. Then, doing the same for myself, I will keep the rule which I set up for another.-.-.-.

  I will consider, as if I were at the point of death, what procedure and norm I will at that time wish I had used in the manner of making the present election. Then,
guiding myself by that norm, I should make my decision on the whole matter. 17

  The role-plays were grounded in the belief that any important decision merits a thoughtful investment of time, imagination, and energy. Loyola wanted recruits to mull a decision over from different angles, including from the sobering perspective of one's deathbed: how would you decide if you were at death's door? What values and personal objectives would guide you at that moment?

  Schall returned to these meditations during his final days, but this time he was at the point of death-it was no imaginative exercise. From when he entered Jesuit training at nineteen up to his final moments, his routine included the twicedaily habit of reflecting on his actions, reassessing his goals, learning from his mistakes, and adjusting his course. And after more than forty thousand such examens in his Jesuit lifetime, he confessed the realization that he still didn't have everything right.

  From when he entered Jesuit training at nineteen up to his final moments, Schall's routine included the twice-daily habit of reflecting on his actions, reassessing his goals, learning from his mistakes, and adjusting his course.

  Not that he could have-and not that any human being ever will. It's precisely in his flawed humanity that Schall epitomizes an integrated life of leadership. Conventional wisdom would find leadership in Schall's attaining inner-circle power in the world's largest empire. But his whole life was an example of leadership, whether he was succeeding or failing. The leader was not only Schall the first-rank mandarin, but also Schall the powerless prisoner. It was not only Schall when colleagues wished they had a hundred more like him, but also Schall the "rather harsh man, very irascible and morose." It was not only Schall the mafa and the "Master of Universal Mysteries," but also Schall the man who did the best he could to chart a heroic, risky path through a complicated world fraught with more no-win dilemmas than easy choices.

  Ironically, the best example of how well Schall served his leadership principles-and how well they served him-can be found not at the pinnacle of his glory and influence but on his deathbed, where he was still taking the risk to lead, still upholding his integrity by standing by his principles, still leading at age seventy-six, and still persevering.

  The first act of heroism is taking the risk to lead

  The dying Schall catalogued his missteps: adopting his servant's son, pursuing a lifestyle that offended holy poverty, and so on. Of course, there was at least one way Schall could have avoided those mistakes: he could have never accepted the risk of leading. With personal risk comes missteps, but not to take risks is to shrink from leadership and dissipate one's potential. Not taking risks would mean fewer missteps to contemplate at life's end, perhaps, but also more "might have beens" and less significant achievements.

  Had Schall been more self-aware, more effective in his twicedaily self-examinations, might he have made decisions he would not have regretted at life's end? Perhaps. But no depth of self-awareness would have saved him from every misjudgment, nor is that a realistic goal of self-reflection. Instead, the pursuit of self-awareness is grounded in the reality that humans make mistakes-lots of them. But leaders go steps further: they reflect on mistakes, learn from them, and move on.

  No depth of self-awareness would have saved him from every misjudgment, nor is that a realistic goal of self-reflection.

  Schall's final leadership risk? Being the first to back down. Jesuits looked at the world and others through the lens of love, but those lenses were sometimes clouded. No love-driven Jesuit team ever managed to exempt itself from the human condition; in this case Schall and his colleagues wasted energy pointing fingers at one another rather than making the most of the opportunities created by Schall's successes. It was the dying Schall who took the risk to effect the reconciliation that had eluded them: "I have-.-.-. offended against brotherly love."

  A life utterly changed is still the same life

  What gave Schall's life its integrity, its wholeness? Superficially, nothing. His life seemed fragmented, what with his ever mutating portrait. His changes in appearance-from European priestly dress to the long hair and beard of Ming China to the shaved head and pigtail of a Manchu-caricature his profound personal transformation. This transformation took place over a lifetime: from youth through old age, through changes in occupation, changes in relationships, and changes in life circumstances. What ties a life together, making it recognizable as one life?

  What gave Schall's constantly changing life wholeness and integrity was his lifelong commitment to a set of goals and values. They were the only things in his life that hadn't changed, yet he needed nothing else. In Schall's case those motivating principles had begun to take shape when he became a Jesuit at age nineteen; Loyola hadn't articulated the same principles for himself until he was almost forty-well more than halfway through a typical sixteenth-century lifetime. More important than when each person discovers defining life principles is making the commitment to pursue them. Whether these life principles are discovered early or late in life, the commitment to measure life choices against them is crucial. By this process life is transformed from a succession of random episodes to something whole, a life with integrity.

  Everyone leads, and everyone is leading all the time

  Although Schall was stripped of his duties and titles, his ability to lead had not been taken from him. Schall the "Master of Universal Mysteries" was no greater or no less a leader than the elderly, dying Schall stripped of his power and influence. His leadership opportunities didn't end with his fall from grace. Even as he neared death he had opportunities to lead: to continue to reflect on his life, to learn, to live by the principles he valued-and to make peace with his colleagues and with himself, then die with dignity and integrity.

  Leaders persevere

  The "one defining moment" leadership theory misses by definition a critical hallmark of leadership. By focusing only on a leader's decisive engagement on the world's center stage, it diverts us from the years of preparation, the life habits, the values, and the self-knowledge gained through stumbles that contributed to the defining moment.

  Leaders persevere. Leaders have the courage and the will to keep going. Schall's final wish, long after his glory and influence had vanished, will seem odd to any but those who share his vision that one's leadership opportunities continue as long as one's life does: "Since the compassionate God has in his patience enabled me to live even till now in the society,-.-.-. so I have full trust that, won account of your prayers and blessed works, he will grant me perseverance to the end."18 Perseverance for what? For his last leadership project-completing what he started by dying true to his principles-which he saw as no less crucial than earlier, more glamorous leadership opportunities.

  Perseverance is a core element of Jesuit leadership, by no means unique to Schall. The same spirit of perseverance motivated Benedetto de Goes through a long, disappointing journey that ended with his death in remote Xuzhou.

  And the same drive to persevere inflamed a Jesuit team that forty years after Schall's death-and a century after that of Goes-paced China's Great Wall to its terminus overlooking barren plains not far from Xuzhou.

  Leaders persevere not only out of pride, integrity, and commitment to their values. They persevere because they are all at once trusting, optimistic, foolish, and humble enough to hope and expect that the seeds of their efforts will blossom in times, ways, and places that they can neither predict nor control. It is an attitude that inspired thousands of teachers in the world's most successful school system and that animates teachers and parents today. And it infected Schall and his colleagues. After decades of crawling back from each reversal in China, Schall's humiliation and death, together with the banishment of thirty colleagues, definitively signaled the Jesuits' utter defeat in China-except to the handful of magis-driven Jesuits foolish enough to believe that they could once again resurrect their fortunes there.

  It didn't take long for them to do so. Freed from jail but in danger of expulsion, Ferdinand V
erbiest stayed in China, kept a low profile, and waited. His colleagues throughout the country were summarily deported to Canton, but no officials arrived to enforce the expulsion edict in the capital. It soon became clear at the court of Emperor K'ang-hsi that Schall's archpersecutor and successor as head of the Calendar Bureau, Yang Kuan-Hsien, was far from a master of universal mysteries. When Verbiest was finally summoned by imperial bureaucrats, it was not to arrange for his deportation but to solicit his input on how to salvage Yang's error-plagued excuse for a calendar. Verbiest was well prepared for this moment, having been mentored by Schall, as Schall had been by Terrenz and as Ricci had been by Clavius. "Jesuits learn best by teaching others," Polanco had said-and that included teaching one another. Within three years of Schall's death and the banishment of his colleagues, Jesuits began trickling back to the mainland, and Verbiest was in charge of the Calendar Bureau. A succession of Jesuits headed the bureau for nearly another century, and Jesuit dominance of the position was ultimately interrupted not by another reversal in China but by the pope's 1773 edict dismantling the entire Jesuit company.

  Matteo Ricci's world map had aroused the curiosity of his learned Chinese friends and had led to initial Jesuit success in China. A century after his death, maps once again figured in Jesuit success. French Jesuits, new members of the Academie Royale des Sciences after an apprenticeship at Louis XIV's observatory in Paris, reached China at a fortuitous moment. Thanks to Verbiest, the company was back in favor. And the emperor, K'ang-hsi, was eager to learn more about his vast empire. The French Jesuits proposed to win his confidence in their skills by mapping the Great Wall. Three of them left Beijing in June of 1708 and returned seven months later, having traced the Wall toward its western terminus near the Tarim Basin once crossed by Goes. The emperor was apparently pleased with their product, a fifteen-foot-long map noting rivers, forts, and some three hundred gates. He commissioned a complete atlas of his empire. Three Jesuit teams fanned out and spent the better part of a decade conducting survey work for the first comprehensive atlas of China, a work that remained a key reference for European maps of China until well into the nineteenth century. Their imperial safe-conduct guaranteed a positive reception from provincial bureaucrats, even in the remote wilderness and vast expanse of northern Mongolia, which they reduced to a single map: "Tho' [the map of Mongolia] was empty enough,-.-.-. the emperor was pleased with it."19 Most of the officials they met in their travels had never before seen a westerner, though some were aware of the reputations of Li Ma-tou (Ricci) and T'ang Jo-wang (Schall) and of the contributions the two had made to China.