He was not a martyr who died for his faith nor has he been canonized or even beatified but the anniversary of the death of this Jesuit priest 400 years ago got more international recognition than many saints in the Church’s calendar.
In this year, 2010, Taipei in Taiwan, Macau, on the south coast of China, and three of the largest cities on the China mainland ran academic symposiums and exhibitions about the Jesuit’s life and work. Also involved was the Marche region of central Italy where the Jesuit’s birthplace, Macerata, is situated. The exhibitions focused, through the person and work of this Jesuit, on the first significant encounter between
Europe and China.
The subject of all this interest, not only on the part of the Jesuits but also by the Chinese communist government, was an Italian called Matteo Ricci. He was born in Italy on 6 October 1552. Interestingly, that was just a little less than two months before another would-be China missionary, Francis Xavier, would die on an off-shore island within sight of the China mainland where he dearly wished to preach the Gospel. Ricci would carry out Francis’ dreams with a success that Xavier could never have dreamed of – and also in ways that Francis almost certainly would not have used.
After a normal Jesuit training, Ricci was assigned to the China Mission in 1583. Getting into China was still fraught with difficulties and Ricci was first sent to Macau, then a small Portuguese enclave on the south coast of China, about 60 km west of Hongkong. It was mainly a trading post for the Portuguese doing business with Chinese merchants.
It took many stages for Ricci to make his way into China and he would live in a number of places for some time, always inching his way to his ultimate goal – Beijing and the emperor’s court. In 1583, he travelled inland to Zhaoqing (where some Irish Jesuits would much later go to study the Chinese language) and Shaozhou (today’s Shaoguan) in Guangdong province in the south of China and then on to Nanchang in Jiangxi province and Nanjing. Ricci eventually arrived in Beijing 18 years later in 1601, and in time the Chinese emperor would allow him to stay in the capital until his death on 11 May, 1610.
In all of this Ricci’s thinking was similar to Xavier’s. If he could win over the emperor’s approval for proclaiming the Christian gospel, things would be much easier for his fellow-missionaries. What he had yet to learn was the relative inaccessibility of the emperor, whom in fact he would never meet face-to-face.
In winning over the authorities Ricci had two major assets in his favour. First, he was well versed in the latest scientific and mathematical findings of Europe, which at that time were well ahead of China’s knowledge. His second asset was his mastering of the very difficult Chinese language which he learnt to speak and write elegantly, as befitted a scholar. Ricci was blessed with a phenomenal photographic memory. It was said he could just look over a page of written Chinese and repeat it accurately forwards or backwards! In fact, a whole book has been written about this talent. He was thus able to provide the Chinese with the latest scientific findings from Europe in their own language.
The Jesuits were also remarkable for their adaptation of Chinese customs. In the beginning Ricci had thought he should dress like a Chinese monk but found that this did not win respect so he switched to the robes of a Chinese scholar.
He introduced astronomical instruments which made it possible for the Chinese for the first time accurately to predict eclipses of the sun and moon, information which was crucial in the celebration of Chinese feasts.
He also published the first maps of China ever to be seen in Europe, while opening up the Chinese themselves to the territories and oceans surrounding them. The Jesuits were enthusiastic mapmakers and, in spite of the primitive conditions, travelled all over China doing their research. Ricci and his companion Fr Verbiest are said to have made no less than 52 map-making journeys.
Ricci showed that the width of China was just three-quarters of what had hitherto been believed, and his maps were regarded as more accurate than those of Europe. He also was able to identify China as the legendary Cathay that had been described by a much earlier Italian explorer, Marco Polo.
For 20 years Ricci had tried to have a personal audience with the emperor but that was impossible even for highly-ranked Chinese. Then, very unexpectedly Ricci was summoned to fix a chiming clock which the Jesuits had given as a gift to the emperor. It had stopped and the emperor’s scientists could not fix it. Even then, however, Ricci did not get into the emperor’s presence. They were called another time when an eclipse of the sun had been wrongly forecast by Chinese astronomers. When the Jesuits’ calculation proved correct, their position with the royal throne was secure.
Ricci’s extraordinary success, in the company of some outstanding Jesuit companions, did not at all mean the neglect of their missionary goals. In fact, all that they did was aimed at making the preaching of the Gospel easier and more effective. In addition to his scientific work, Ricci wrote religious, ethics and catechetical books in the Chinese language. All the time he and his companions in Beijing were working to make the preaching of the Gospel easier for their Jesuit companions in other parts of the country.
Ricci won huge respect from the Chinese elite because of a combination of deep knowledge of things both scientific and religious but also because of the respect and esteem he showed for the highly sophisticated culture of the Chinese. As one writer put it: ‘By working out a synthesis of the human and moral values in Chinese culture and of the integral gospel message, his method anticipated the pastoral approach of the Church today.’ In other words, a man ahead of his time.
The influence of Matteo Ricci is still felt by Jesuits today. When the Irish Jesuits first went to Hong Kong in 1926, the very first building they set up was Ricci Hall, a hostel for students at the University of Hong Kong – a role it still plays.