by Fr. David A. Brown, S.J.
David Brown, S.J., is an astronomer at the Vatican Observatory at Castel Gandolfo, Italy.

The course of history is sometimes punctuated by points in time that witness the passing of one seminal figure only to see the birth of another who builds on the work of his predecessor. One example is seen in the figure of Isaac Newton (b. 4 January 1643) who was born less than a year after Galileo’s death (8 January 1642). Thus it was also with the famous Jesuit missionary and sinologist Matteo Ricci, who was born (6 October 1152) in the same year in which St. Francis Xavier had died (3 December) on Shangchuan island off the coast of China, his hope of entering the mainland remaining unrealized. Xavier’s hopes would be fulfilled in Matteo Ricci, whose endeavors in Asia would change the course of history.

The year 2010 marks the 400th anniversary of Matteo Ricci’s death in Beijing on 11 May 1610. To commemorate the occasion, Pope Benedict XVI has asked Bishop Claudio Giuliodori of the Diocese of Macerata (the region in Italy that was home to the young Ricci) to sponsor a Jubilee year, as stated in the Pontiff’s letter of 6 May 2009. Given the Pope’s emphasis on the importance of such an occasion, combined with the emergence of China as a superpower and a shifting of the global economic center of gravity toward Asia, it seems an opportune moment to examine the importance of Matteo Ricci’s legacy for these modern times especially with regard to the challenges confronting the Church in its efforts to spread the Gospel. This article will discuss the broad themes of Ricci’s missionary enterprise that both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI have deemed as worthy of note for the present in some of their recent speeches: Pope John Paul II’s Lettera di Giovanni Paolo II al Vescovo di Macerata (LettJPII, 1982), Address to the Gregorian University Commemorating the 400th Anniversary of the Arrival in China of Matteo Ricci, S.J. (AddressJPII, 1982), and Dialogue of Cultures: the Road to Peace (DialogueJPII, 2001), and Pope Benedict XVI’s Message to the Bishop of Macerata on the Occasion of the Fourth Centenary of the Death of Fr. Matteo Ricci (LettBXVI, 2009).

In many ways, the current situation faced by an increasingly eastward looking Church is not too different from that of 500 years ago. From centuries ago, one can hear echoes of the following words: “Whoever desires to serve as a soldier of God beneath the banner of the cross in our society, which we desire to be designated by the name of Jesus, and to serve the Lord alone and the Church, his spouse, under the Roman pontiff, the vicar of Christ on earth, is a member of a Society founded chiefly for this purpose: to strive especially for the defense and propagation of the faith and for the progress of souls in Christian life and doctrine” (Formula of the Institute, 1540). These are the opening lines from the foundational document of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), initially approved by Pope Paul III in 1540. Freshly penned from Ignatius and his companions, they inflamed the hearts of men and inspired them to enter the ranks of the Society of Jesus with zeal and fervor for the Lord even as they faced a rapidly changing world fraught with much turmoil but also replete with opportunity and new horizons. Even as the Protestant Reformation divided Christendom in northern Europe, the discovery of the Americas and travel to other parts previously inaccessible in the Orient inaugurated a new age in which the Church looked outward to new realms both East and West. Within Europe itself, the old Medieval order and Scholasticism of the universities were passing and being supplanted by an urban culture permeated with the new Renaissance humanism. This demanded men formed in Renaissance culture, men open to a new and bigger world, and men who could engage it by communicating effectively. With its printing press and newly-encountered lands, it was a world not entirely different from our own, a modern world awash in more information and having more education than ever, yet torn by culture wars as the dominance of the old Western order is increasingly supplanted by a “multipolar” world made smaller by globalization and by the mass media.

It was into a world in flux that Matteo Ricci was born on 6 October 1552 in the Italian city of Macerata. As the eldest of 13 children, he was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. However, Ricci entered the Society of Jesus in 1571, partly due to the influence of his former teacher, whom he deeply admired and who had entered the Society a few years before. Having completed his time at the novitiate of Sant’ Andrea Quirinale, he then did part of his Jesuit seminary training in Rome at the Roman College, where he studied philosophy, theology, mathematics, and astronomy. There he would have met Jesuits of great learning such as the mathematician Christopher Clavius and the theologian Robert Bellarmine. Imbued with the spirit of the new learning in such an environment and filled with zeal for being a missionary in the Orient — partly due to hearing about the great deeds of missionaries already there — Matteo Ricci was finally granted his request to work in the missions. He departed for Asia from Lisbon and arrived in Goa (India) in 1578. After four years there, he was dispatched by Alessandro Valignano, his former novice master, to the Portuguese island-colony of Macao (off the coast of southern China) in 1582 to begin preparations to enter mainland China in the hope of establishing a permanent mission there. Together with another Jesuit, Michele Ruggieri, Ricci was instructed to master the Mandarin Chinese dialect, the language of the educated class and of official government administration in the Chinese imperial bureaucracy. Having done this and having learned the customs of the culture, both Ricci and Ruggieri were finally authorized to enter the city of Zhaoqing (Shiuhing/Chao-King) in China in 1583 by the governor of Canton, Wang-Pan, a Mandarin official who was intrigued by Western skills in cartography, mathematics, astronomy, and clocks. Seeking the acceptance of the culture into which they had entered, Ricci and Ruggieri came dressed in the clothing of Buddhist monks, but quickly realizing the marginal status of that class in Chinese society, they changed their attire to that of Mandarins who were well-respected in Confucian society. Their stay in Canton was based on the condition that they become fully Chinese in their ways and allegiances, something to which they agreed. It was there and later in Nanjing and Nanchang that Ricci labored patiently, constantly adapting himself to Chinese culture, and in the process, built up a network of friendships based on trust and on a mutual exchange of what both East and West saw as important, characteristic, curious, and desirable in the other. Here, Ricci’s knowledge of astronomy, mathematics, calendars, and maps was a source of fascination and invaluable to Chinese scholars who deeply respected him. Then in 1601, Ricci’s dream was finally realized when he entered Beijing and was allowed to enter the Forbidden City in the hope of having an audience with the Ming Emperor himself, Wan-li. Though he never met the emperor face-to-face, he was given access to the Forbidden City, and the Jesuits were henceforth made beneficiaries of the emperor’s patronage. Ricci spent the next nine years of his life at the imperial court placing his mathematical skills at the service of the emperor and laboring slowly to introduce Christianity to the people and their culture using Chinese concepts, philosophy, and, of course, the language. He died in Beijing in 1610. As a measure of the esteem in which he was held at court by the emperor and officials, special permission was granted to the Jesuits to bury him in Beijing, a privilege not ordinarily granted to foreigners in that age.

By the time of his death, Matteo Ricci (Li Madou) had facilitated an unprecedented meeting of East and West and had planted the seeds of the Gospel in the very heart of China. Moreover, he had done what had been viewed as impossible: to formulate an entirely new non-Western framework by which to communicate Christianity to a culture utterly unlike his own. The result is seen in the many writings he produced, including a translation of the 10 Commandments into Mandarin, his famous Treatise on Friendship, and his great apologetic work The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven. This latter work, perhaps his most famous, was characteristic of Ricci’s attempt to begin with Chinese considerations, in this case from natural, philosophical and political premises: “Every state or realm has a sovereign (lord); would it ever be possible that only the universe would not have a (sovereign) lord” (Ricci, True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven and Earth)? In the realm of mathematics, Ricci also translated Euclid’s Elements of Geometry into Chinese.

Matteo Ricci’s legacy is an impressive one, the effects of which are still felt today. As such, the Church can still draw many lessons from it in its rapport with different cultures (including that of Western secularism) in modern times. With the Apostolic See ultimately in charge of setting the Church’s general evangelization priorities, it is important to examine what it sees as the key elements of Ricci’s methodology, which is of relevance to the Church’s present and future missionary efforts. Something of this can be gleaned from letters written by both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI in the last 30 years commemorating the different anniversaries of events in Ricci’s journey in the Orient.

In some ways the style of evangelization that characterized Ricci and his contemporaries was nothing new. It had its precedent in the early missionary endeavors of the first Christians as they engaged the Greco-Roman culture of their day, as St. Paul did at the Areopagus 2000 years ago. What made Ricci’s methods and those of other Jesuits novel 1500 years later in the Age of Discovery was the sharp contrast between their methods and those of the European colonizers with whom they had to deal and on whom they depended. The colonizers often tended to coerce local indigenous populations into embracing Christianity, the motivation often being simple economic gain. Their first-hand witness of the brutality of some of the colonizers, combined with encountering the advanced cultures of Japan and China — cultures which would not so easily bend to European ways — indicate that a different approach had to be found by missionaries to bring the Gospel to the peoples of the Orient.

The seminal figure, who in many ways set the tone and standard for the methods which Ricci and contemporaries would later follow, was Alessandro Valignano. He had been appointed Visitor to the East Indies Mission in 1573 by the Jesuit Superior General Mercurian. An immensely talented man, Valignano knew that the only way that the Christian faith could take root in such different lands was if it were truly received into the hearts and minds and culture of the people. The Gospel had to be received in a way they could call their own, understood in terms familiar to themselves and not through the prism of the European worldview. This would require the ability to respect their culture and customs by inserting oneself into it, which if done correctly, could win the good will of the people and promote true friendship. Of course, all of this would begin with the ability to learn the language of a particular culture. For Valignano, these steps served as the basic prerequisites to any long-lasting form of evangelization.

Beginning with Francis Xavier and continuing with Valignano, experience of the missions in Japan and in other territories quickly led to the realization that China was the central cultural power in the Orient, the source from which many other nations had derived their own cultures and to which they looked for continuing developments. Thus, engagement with Oriental culture, an establishment of a link between East and West, between country and Church, all built on dialogue, would (and continues to) find its test case in the Church’s rapport with China. Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI note that, above all, Ricci’s emphasis on inculturation of the Gospel in Chinese culture has been and continues to be of crucial importance. First, they observe that a certain amount of pre-evangelization is a requisite for the process of inculturating the Gospel. That is, there has to be an engagement with the culture itself, beginning with a working knowledge of its language, then an acquaintance with its ways and mores, all properly understood through a knowledge of the philosophical or credal system that shapes and provides a narrative for the culture. Further, both popes note that the evangelist also has to inculturate himself (in as far as this is possible without compromising the basic tenets of the Christian faith) so as see the world through its own culture, as was the particular case of Ricci who had to learn how the Chinese perceive things. Only then will the next step in evangelization come: inculturation of the Gospel message itself. In the case of Ricci, it was not just the presentation of Christianity to the Chinese in their own language (Mandarin) but also promotion of its understanding through the Confucian worldview which pervaded China at that time. For both popes, two fundamentals can be identified in Ricci’s methodology: 1) Chinese neophytes would not have to abandon their culture and become any less Chinese when embracing Christianity; 2) rather than uproot or destroy it, the Christian faith would complete, perfect, complement, and enrich all that was best in Chinese tradition (DialogueJPII, 2001 & LettBXVI, 2009). That is, the Incarnation itself, the Word becoming flesh, can only ennoble — grace perfecting nature.

Going beyond the theoretical framework of evangelization, both popes stress that what was novel about Ricci in practice was his profound empathy with and respect for the Chinese people, their ways, and their culture. The means by which this would be realized in daily life was in the cultivation of friendships and relationships with persons, a mutual trust built up slowly over the 28 years that he was in China. This process required great patience. Given its length of time, the number of visitors received, and the many setbacks experienced, the mission always seemingly in danger of failure. Yet, reciprocation in good will from the Chinese would follow. A testament to Ricci’s cultivation of friendships was the remarkable success which his Treatise on Friendship (Cicero’s De Amicitia) met in the country when printed in Mandarin. A wide network of friendships had been formed with Christian charity at its center.

For Pope John Paul II, an important dimension in this role of friendship in the process of inculturation is the virtue of honesty, expressed in transparency. The early missionaries came to China with no ulterior motives and put themselves at the service of governors and, ultimately, the emperor himself. Pope John Paul II notes: “What the Chinese people particularly admire in Matteo Ricci’s scientific work in China is his humble, honest, and disinterested attitude, not inspired by ulterior motives and free from links with any foreign economy or power” (AddressJPII, 1982). Indeed, violation of already-established trust would have doomed the mission, given the suspicion with which foreigners were held. Instead, there was to be a mutual enrichment. The missionaries came with certain practical skills which would be of benefit to the Chinese. Here, good will was accompanied by a practical cultural exchange from which both sides stood to benefit.

As successful as the Church’s initial rapprochement with China came to be under Ricci’s sojourn there, it was not without its difficulties and failings. Ricci himself, notwithstanding his successes, is not beyond criticism for his methods employed, one example being a tendency to overemphasize how strongly Christianity is implicit in Confucian philosophy. The issue at hand was how far the Christian faith could be stretched to accommodate an almost-entirely different worldview and still remain true to its evangelical proclamation, and his expert knowledge of Chinese culture was inevitably subject to criticism, including that of some fellow Jesuits. It is one of the central tensions which has always been at the heart of the Church’s missionary endeavors throughout the generations: the tension between a robust Christian orthodoxy and creativity required to give the Gospel a new expression, something which was to become a major issue in the Chinese rites controversy 150 years later. Both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI speak about this creative tension, noting that true creativity in inculturation is at its best when it is able to maintain the integrity of the faith in its totality: “I therefore willingly join those who are commemorating this generous son of your region, an obedient minister of the Church and a daring and intelligent messenger of Christ’s Gospel. Given his intense scientific and spiritual activity, it is impossible not to be favorably impressed by his innovative and special skill in bringing together with full respect China’s cultural and spiritual traditions in their totality” (LettBXVI, 2009). Another source of tension is of a more temperamental nature: desire for immediate results and conversions as opposed to the patience required by the long view: planting the seeds which others will reap. Any missionary — and Ricci was no exception— knows that he is planting the seeds which others will reap years after him.

In noting the various anniversaries connected with Ricci’s encounter with China, Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI highlight important lessons for establishing dialogue with different cultures, especially with China. Although China remains in some ways a society strongly resistant to foreign influences and yet desirous of some Western innovations — a situation not unlike that of the 1500s — its cultural context is entirely different than that of the past. With the Marxist Revolution having overturned and destroyed the old Confucian order on which China had based its daily rhythms of life, and with more recent secularism eroding its last vestiges, the cultural reality now dominant in China is entirely unlike that faced by Ricci centuries ago. Ironically, the Church’s dialogue with secularism, in particular its emphasis on the role of reason as the starting point for dialogue, will be of enormous assistance in future years. Likewise, the provision of men who can provide certain practical skills to help the Chinese to develop their society is still of great relevance today.