Matteo Ricci’s Method of Accommodation

In his memoirs, Spanish Jesuit Alonso Sanchez left us a rare assessment of Matteo Ricci’s strengths and what allowed Ricci to realize success when many others did not. He wrote: “For besides being a very good theologian and astronomer, whom they [the Chinese] very much appreciate, he has learned in a very short time their language and many characters so that he could speak with the mandarins without an interpreter, a fact that they admire and enormously enjoy.” While Ricci was not the first Jesuit in China, he was the first Jesuit to live in China and eventually be buried in the Imperial Ming capital. While Father Sanchez’s assessment was accurate, the story of his success rests on Ricci’s method of accommodation which allowed him to the top of the Imperial Ming government. Ricci was able to integrate smoothly into Chinese society and revealed an intense curiosity about its details. Unlike many other missionaries, he had much respect for the Chinese beliefs that preceded Christianity, attempting to understand them on their own terms. On this line, the form of Christianity that he ended up evangelizing was deeply informed by Chinese thought and reflected an interesting blend of Chinese and Christian beliefs. Indeed, Ricci’s argument was that the Chinese sages had previously known the true God in antiquity, but that “knowledge and practice had been subverted by literati of subsequent ages and especially by the introduction of Buddhism to China.” When he attempted to demonstrate the existence of an omnipotent, Christian God, he did so by synthesizing Confucian and Christian principles. This paper will demonstrate that Ricci’s success in integrating into China and his development of a Confucian-Christian hybrid was reliant on his sincere respect for Chinese intellectual history and is inseparable from it.

Matteo Ricci was born on 6 October 1552 in Macerata, the administrative capital of the Marches, in the Papal States. He studied with a private tutor at the age of 16 when his father enrolled Ricci in the Sapienza University of Rome to study jurisprudence. Against his father’s will, Ricci became a Jesuit Novitiate at the Roman College and studied philosophy, theology, rhetoric, humanities, and grammar. However, Ricci excelled in the disciplines of astronomy, cosmology, and mathematics under the guidance of the distinguished Christopher Clavius. While at the College, Ricci encountered the Portuguese Jesuit Martin da Silva who sent out a call for fresh recruits for the Indian Mission. He requested and was granted an Indipetae, a letter of recommendation for the Indian Mission. From Rome, by way of Lisbon, he arrived at Goa in the capital of the Portuguese Indies on 13 September 1578 where he taught Latin, Rhetoric, and Greek grammar and theology. Five years later, Alessandro Valignano, the leader of the Jesuit missions in the East Indies, sent Ricci to assist Michele Ruggieri in establishing a permanent mission in China with the purpose of leading the population to Christ. The two Jesuits first lived in the Portuguese outpost. However, to establish a mission, they needed permits from the proper Chinese bureaucrats called “Literati.” To do that, the Jesuits set upon learning the official dialect of Chinese language spoken by the Literati elite. Eventually, Ruggieri and Ricci gained the proper authority to establish the Jesuit mission in Zhaoqing just southwest of Macau on 10 September 1583.

While earlier missionaries tried to convert the Chinese, none of them stayed for more than a few years and always had the attitude that they would return home. The Jesuits knew that this mission was a long term project. Many of the missionaries spent the rest of their lives in China including Ricci, and if they did return to Europe, it was on mission business. The Jesuits were patently committed to China and this commitment earned them respect on the Chinese. As Ricci explains, “The Chinese will not permit a foreigner to live at large within the confines of the kingdom if he has any intention of ever leaving it or if he has any communication with the outside world.” The effect of long term residency in China was twofold. Not only would the Chinese begin to know the foreigners, but the foreigners would naturally adapt to Chinese culture. As D. E. Mungello writes, “the power of Chinese culture to sinify foreigners has been frequently noted by historians… some – certainly not all – of the Jesuits during the time of and immediately following Ricci were significantly changed by their experiences in China.” Ricci would start dressing like a Confucian scholar from 1595 onward, carrying the fan and observing the elaborate code of manners and behavior. This was a critical innovation in the development of the mission and Ricci’s responsibility. Previously the mission had focused on creating a social identity distinct from the Portuguese, by referring to themselves as Italians. However, Ricci perceived that identifying themselves with the Literati would be more profitable for religious and social integration. It is crucial to recognize that the problem the Jesuits faced was not so much intolerance or persecution as it was indifference; people simply did not care about the gospel and did not particularly want to hear about it. In this line, Ricci’s move toward making himself known as an intellectual and an admirer of Confucius was brilliant, insofar as it made his words relevant in intellectual disputes that scholars did care about.

Additionally, Ricci’s personal magnetism and charm became a great gift to him; not only was he sincerely fascinated by the Chinese, but he also fascinated them with his erudition and friendliness. He hosted and attended endless dinner parties, the usual setting for intellectual conversation, and taught pupils in the formal Chinese manner. He seemed to have genuine respect for the Chinese and they for him, with one Chinese commentator paying him the very highest of compliments when he said “Thus in foreign countries there are also real gentlemen.” Ricci’s skills as a mapmaker, geometer, mathematician, and logician were foundational to his success in preaching the gospel. He had many different types of intellectual challenge and they were all instrumental in persuading the Literati he was a valuable person to listen to. In Rule’s words, “Ricci’s intention seems partly to have been to administer a psychological jolt to the self-satisfaction of the Chinese scholar. But, more than this, he wished to contrast the rationality of Western science and religion with what he regarded as the irrationality of much of Chinese religion.”

This fact made any intellectual successes inherently religious ones. Accordingly, Ricci began drawing maps for Chinese patrons. Ricci started with a Chinese atlas dated in 1579 and affixed longitude and latitude readings to them and drew a European style map dated in 1588. Throughout the years, Ricci improved and revised his map in 1600 and again in 1602which was at the request of the Wanli Emperor. The map, called Kunyu Wanguo Quantu, was printed in Chinese characters and was the first Chinese map done in a European style. This “Map of the World” was extremely widely distributed, even to the imperial palace, and so the Jesuits could spread their doctrine by the use of the commentary and annotations, much of which referenced Christian principles.

Ricci’s knowledge of geography was instrumental in his method of accommodation and put the foundation of cultural exchange. Prior to Ricci, there were a number of sources about China found in Europe; however they were fragmented, vague, and dubious. Ricci was able to confirm that China was the same as Sina in Ptolemy’s atlas, the rumor that people did eat horse meat, and the presence of silk. Interestingly, when speaking about the name of the country, Ricci wrote, “we usually call this country Ciumquo [Zhongguo] or Ciumhoa [Zhonghua], the first word signifying kingdom, and the second, garden. When put together the words are translated, ‘To be at the center.’” This reflected Ricci’s assimilation and comfort with Chinese culture; not only did he characterize the speakers who call China Zhongguo as “we,” he also appeared comfortable with referring to China is in the center, the important status in the world map.

His astronomic acumen paid off in other matters as well. In a number of months prior to September 1596, Ricci recorded a number of observations that predicted that a solar eclipse. Meanwhile Chinese astronomers were recording the same observations, however without any consistency. Then on the morning of 22 September 1595, all of China witnessed a near-total eclipse with a degree of accuracy where none of the Chinese astronomers could match. Eclipses and other astronomical phenomena have had a specific impact on Chinese culture. According to the ancient Chinese beliefs, the right to rule was granted by “Heaven” (called Tian) which in turn would authorize a just emperor to lead. However if the emperor should become unjust, Heaven could revoke the emperor’s authorization to rule. This authorization was called the Mandate of Heaven (Tianming). Eclipses such as the one in 1596, might be a sign that the emperor had lost the Mandate and could be justifiably overthrown. So when a Li Zicheng led a Manchurian peasant rebellion and defeated the Ming in 1644, Li Zicheng claimed of the Mandate of Heaven, the Qing Dynasty was born. So when Matteo Ricci was able to accurately predict the solar eclipse, he won immediate acclaim and was eventually invited to become an advisor in the Ming court in Beijing. The Chinese, like the Jesuits, believed that religious and scientific knowledge were interrelated and mutually dependent. This meant that when Ricci demonstrated that the Chinese had errors in their natural philosophy, it was easier for him to then argue that their supernatural philosophy (e.g., theology) was also in error. Indeed, his most prominent converts were attracted by Ricci’s philosophical knowledge and were pupils of his. One prominent scholar, Ch’u T’ai-su (Ignatius), professes his faith by discussing “the light of reason which God has given men” and rejects false gods as “unreasonable.”

Ricci emphasized that the Chinese valued their written language far more than their spoken language, especially the Literati and other educated elite. The reason was that even though there were many different cultures in the Chinese Kingdom, all had to learn the written language in order to live. However, as Ricci found out, Zhongwen, as the written language is called “throws a heavy burden on the memory” because each character stands for a syllable, not a letter. However, in administering a large multi-cultural nation, a written language is necessary. Additionally, the fact that the written language was not explicitly phonetic made it such that different cultures could easily read the same text, despite the fact that they would pronounce the word out loud. The spoken language is another problem because was and still is broken up into several dialects that are often mutually unintelligible. As Ricci explains in a letter to Claudio Acquaviva, the Chinese language:

“is so equivocal that many words signify more than a thousand things, and there is nothing to distinguish one from another in pronunciation except with a higher or lower, in altogether four tones. And thus, when speaking, they write down what they mean in order to make themselves understood, for the characters are all different. Regarding characters: this is incredible for someone who has not seen it and tried it like I did. There are as many characters as words and things, exceeding 70,000. … All words are monosyllabic. … The usefulness lies in what all nations that have these characters can understand one another by writing and books, even if they are of diverse tongues.”

Ricci mentioned that learning Chinese characters had its advantages, “in as much as it lessens the danger of youthful licentiousness to which all are subject,… [and] to set forth ideas with great clearness.” His focus on Chinese writing was crucial to the development of the mission and the success of Ricci’s thought. He wrote several prominent and widely read books in Chinese, thanks to his mastery of the language.

Related to the written language was the Chinese method of printing books and pamphlets. He claims that the Chinese art of printing dates back as early as 50 BC. The printer will write the characters using a brush called a maobi on a sheet of paper. He then carefully pastes the paper on a wooden tablet. Then he cuts around the outside of the characters so that they are left in relief. Ricci claims that in a single block, “a skilled printer can make copies with incredible speed, turning as many as fifteen hundred copies in a single day.” Additions and alterations could easily be changed by patching up the wood blocks. Ricci and the other missionaries were very impressed by this method of print, in that it allowed for the quick and easy promulgation of thought. The Chinese valuation of writing over speech facilitated this, making the print not only easier to spread than speech, but also more prestigious.

When Ricci arrived in China he found that in order to live in Chinese society, he had to understand Confucianism. This philosophy when the Chinese philosopher Confucius, whom Ricci called him the “The Prince of Philosophers,” started teaching a philosophy, based on ethics and politics between 551 BCE and 479 BCE. However, it wasn’t until the Han Dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) that Confucianism was established as the Imperial ideology and acquired an element in cosmology and metaphysics. Confucianism also was heavily influenced by the other Chinese philosophies Daoism and Chan Buddhism which orthodox Confucian Literati saw as being superstitious and sought to purge mystical elements from Confucianism. However, even the conservative Confucians retained remnants of Daoist and Buddhist enlightenment practices and beliefs. As D. E. Mungello points out, “A scholar-official might be impeccably Confucian in his public life, practice [Daoist] longevity techniques in his private life and bury his parents with Buddhist rites.”

Ricci saw that the key to winning Christian converts among the Chinese was combining a complete knowledge of Confucian philosophy and a way to see Christianity as a superior sect of Confucianism. This was aided by the fact that Ricci only saw Confucius as one of the pillars of virtue. Of Confucius, Ricci wrote, “His self-mastery and abstemious ways of life have led his countrymen to assert that he surpassed in holiness all those who in times past, in the various part of the world, were considered to have excelled in virtue… he was the equal of the pagan philosophers and superior to most of them.” Ricci was also very careful to state in no certain terms, that while the Chinese highly respect him, he was, in fact, a mortal. “He was never venerated with religious rites, however, as they venerate a god.” Ricci presented Confucianism as an excellent ethic, a philosophy for living in the world and engaging in social life. It needed some correcting and clarifying, but was “basically sound from the Christian point of view.”

However, Ricci was critical of Chinese logic and they were somewhat lacking in this regard. Ricci spelled out the early Confucian works that would become the required texts all scholars must be memorized. Ricci wrote that Confucius had written “four volumes of the works of more ancient philosophers and wrote five books of his own.” These nine works are now called the Four Books and the Five Classics and were edited and were annotated by a 12th-century Confucian scholar named, Zhu Xi. It was the Four Books, Five Classics, and Zhu Xi’s annotations that formulated the curriculum of the Chinese service examinations.

While Ricci may have nothing but admiration from Confucius, he only has derision for more Zhu Xi and more modern Confucian scholars such as the Literati. According to Ricci, the ancient Confucian philosophers worshipped a monotheistic god which they called the “King of Heaven, or designated by some other name indicating his rule over heaven and earth.” He said that they did not engage in idolatry, they knew the difference of the good are rewarded and the evil gets punished, and that people have an immortal soul and that after death their soul goes to heaven. Interestingly, Ricci said that he is confident that with the “mercy of God, many of the ancient Chinese found salvation in the natural law.” This is a reflection of a familiar Augustinian doctrine that there might be moral life outside of Christianity, thanks to the providence of a merciful God who did not want to condemn those who had not yet heard of Christ. However, the modern Literati, now known as Neo-Confucians, believe “that the soul ceases to exist when the body does, or a short time after it.” They said that there is no heaven or hell, however that the souls of the just survive and the “wicked, their souls vanish, like thin smoke, immediately after leaving the body.” Unlike the ancient Confucians, the Literati have fallen into idolatry. Perhaps most damning, they believe “that the entire universe is composed of a common substance; that the creator of the universe is one in a continuous body... together with heaven and earth, men and beasts, trees and plants, and the four elements.” Ricci refuted that on the basis that it not only goes against reason but because they are an aberration against the true Confucian philosophy.

Ricci’s most prominent book is known as The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven and in it, his accommodating approach to Confucian principles becomes most clear. He tried to synthesize Confucian and Christian logic in the form of a dialogue between a westerner and a Chinese scholar. The dialogue is a form that has a long history in both Western theology and Chinese thought, in addition to being uniquely valuable in this instance. His goal was fundamentally dialogical, insofar as his intended readership was the Confucian scholar and he was writing from the perspective of the Christian. This book outlines from natural reason the existence of a singular Supreme Being and Creator, using Aristotelian logic and classic arguments from the scholastic period. Interestingly, he demonstrates the oneness of God by appealing to Confucian principles, explaining that much like how there is only one elder in an orderly household, there must be only one Lord of Heaven. There is strong consistency in the ideological foundations of both Christianity and Confucianism, insofar as they both are focused on the importance of a singular, hierarchal understanding of the world. This gave Ricci the ability to articulate the Christian God in a Confucian way, creating a synthesized concept that was more palatable to Chinese intellectuals. This text and Ricci’s generalized approach to dialogue with Confucianism is valuable in many respects. He emphasized the mediation of philosophical thinking, seeming to start from the premise that all scholars and intellectuals could approach Christianity, without any suggestion that the Chinese were lesser-than. His avoidance of any idea of revelation or faith in his evangelizing lead to Chinese scholars thinking him reasonable and, correspondingly, investigating Christian thought further.

The second half of this text is a polemic against Buddhism, which Ricci saw as fundamentally deceived by the “whisperings of devils.” Ricci also wrote about Buddhism and why he felt so strongly about it. He does not have many details about Buddhism except that he mentioned them by name as “Sciequia” (Shijia – The personal name of Sakyamuni Buddha) or “Omitose” (Amitofo – as the Buddhist doctrine used in China). Chinese also known as Chan Buddhism is a sect of the Mahayana School of Buddhism which subscribes to Pure Land doctrine. Ricci also wrote that Buddhism was originally in India and that it was transmitted from China to Japan. He also relayed a story how Buddhism came to China and that the Han Emperor became enlightened and had a dream which told them to send ambassadors to the Indian Buddhists to send books and missionaries. However, Ricci rejects the story as fiction and that the Chinese Emperor’s dream actually instructs to send the ambassadors and find St. Bartholomew and St. Thomas who was preaching in the same place and time and the Buddhists intercepted the Chinese instead. Also he wrote that Buddhists have borrowed Christian knowledge such as the four elements, Democritus’ multiplicity of worlds theory, basic Christian doctrine, and other borrowed ideas. Additionally, he attributes the perversion of Confucianism in the form of Neo-Confucianism to Buddhist influences. There is some level of validity to this, historically speaking, as Neo-Confucianism’s historical development was in many ways a response to Buddhism and borrowed many terms, particularly in the realm of metaphysics, from Buddhism.

The conflict between Ricci and Buddhism was in some ways inevitable. To a Western scholar trained in the scholastic tradition, the form of argument in Buddhism must have seemed far more alien and strange than that of Confucianism. Beyond even that, though, there were fundamental theological disagreements on a much deeper and substantive scale than with Confucianism. For instance, it would be impossible for Ricci to accept a philosophy that, like Buddhism, denied personal immortality and the distinction between humans, nature, and God.

Ricci’s distrust and distaste for Buddhism also served a utilitarian function. There is a persistent tendency for Confucians to consider Buddhism deleterious and delusory, which Ricci tapped into with his championing of Confucianism against Buddhism. This usage of the old dispute between the two ideologies appears to have been conscious, framing Christianity as a way of excluding the Buddhist idols once and for all. In one vivid event, a Jesuit by the name of Longobardo appeared before a magistrate on the charge of disrespecting the ancestors. He denied that he hurt the ancestors, but admitted that he had burnt idols, defending himself on the basis that the Literati, too, were also in favor of burning idols. This gambit was successful, leading to the charges being dismissed, and further demonstrating the connection between the Confucians and the Christians. Indeed, the non-Christian Feng Mu-kang, actually wrote a preface to Ricci’s Catechism and in it attacked Buddhism as the foreign religion. He urged the Chinese to return to the ancient worship of the Lord of Heaven and follow Ricci’s call.

Ricci’s assessment of Daoism is confused, much like most other foreigners in China. By the Ming dynasty, the blending of Buddhism and Daoism was almost complete. However, Ricci did realize that there were slight differences. He mentioned the almost mythical founder known as “Lauzu” (Laozi); however, he said that Laozi had no texts. Actually the Daodejing was attributed to Laozi as well as the Chuangzi supposedly authored by a fourth-century philosopher by the same name. Ricci also did not include any details as to their doctrine other than to say that they have a large number of gods.

His work could not have been written without a deep respect for and knowledge about Chinese culture. At the same time, however, he was fundamentally limited in this cross-cultural dialogue by the persistent Thomist idea that “grace does not destroy nature, but supports and perfects it.” That is to say, Ricci was engaging in dialogue from the perspective that whatever conflicted with Christian doctrine is incorrect. This fundamental conviction explains in many ways his distaste for Buddhism, Neo-Confucianism, and his mischaracterization of Daoism. He was trained in the scholastic tradition and, in Wiest’s words, “was a militant, relentless interlocutor committed to stripping of their errors Buddhist and Taoist monks.” Unlike the Chinese scholars, who conceptualized dialogue as a way of reconciling contradictions and disputes and focused on allowing the adversary to concede without the loss of face, Ricci and the scholastics aimed at proving the absurdity of the opposing tradition. It is perhaps only through Ricci’s profound friendliness and generosity that he managed to be so successful in his mission regardless.

Despite his focus on a synthesis between Christian principles and Confucian thought, and his use of his scientific knowledge to attract interest and respect, Ricci and the Jesuit missionaries never hid their purpose from the Chinese people. Their knowledge of Chinese culture simply allowed them to introduce aspects of Christian thought that were distasteful slowly and carefully, such as the Crucifixion. For instance, when a prominent and powerful eunuch saw a crucifix, he thought was indicative of a plot to kill the emperor. In general, the Chinese found it somewhat baffling and tasteless that the Christians attempted to honor Christ by depicting him in a miserable and painful death. Nonetheless, Ricci did eventually introduce select beginning converts to the idea of the crucifixion, representing the traditional Christian attitude of taking care when discussing the mysteries.

Matteo Ricci’s method of accommodation to convert the Chinese was complex and somewhat successful in that it allowed him access to the very top of the Imperial court. He started by learning the Chinese language and its customs. Then he used his knowledge as a scientist and astronomer to facilitate cultural and academic exchange. Then he began to blend Christianity and Confucianism in a manner in which that Christian doctrine was not compromised, however it would also be in a manner that the Chinese Literati to accept. This was not to say that he truly changed Christian doctrine in a deep and fundamental way. Instead, it would be more correct to think of his work as a translation of the metaphysical presuppositions of Christianity into a form the Chinese would understand, as much as it was a literal translation into Chinese. He viewed Confucianism is a philosophy, incomplete but based on reason, that must necessarily be supplemented by the teachings of Christianity. In many ways, it seems clear that Ricci’s mission in China was the work of a remarkable man, with the personal and intellectual skills to be successful at an extremely difficult task. He was successful because of his intelligence and drive, but perhaps most of all because of his sympathy and willingness to engage with the Chinese Literati on the plane of equals.

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