Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 13.djvu/584

 SCHALL

522

SCHALL

calendar, which he makes in virtue of his office, it bears directly only on the notification of astronomical observations. If the calendar also contains things which savour of superstition it may be said that they are pubUshed under the head of information and are indifferent in themselves, that is the calendar simply shows the days on which such and such things are done according to the customs of the empire, or that they are the days having the conditions which popular superstition considers favourable for certain acts; and Father Schall is passive under the abuse which is fol- lowing this distribution, which he was forced to make by serious reasons and e-\-en necessity.

To remove the last scruples concerning this burn- ing question. Father Oliva, General of the Society of Jesus, appealed to the pope. Alexander VI I, after hav- ing taken account of the whole affair, declared vivce vocis oractdo (3 April, 1664) that he authorized the Jesuits of China, "even professed, to exercise the office and dignity of mandarin and imperial mathematician ". The decision set at rest not only Father Schall's con- science, but also those of the missionaries who might be called to the same duties. In fact, except for a short interruption caused by the persecution of which we shall speak later, the presidency of the astronom- ical bureau remained with the mission till the nine- teenth century. It was always the best human pro- tection both for liberty of preaching and freedom to practice Christianity throughout the Chinese empire. Even in Father Schall's time this was clearly proved bv the rapid increase in the number of neophytes; in 1617 they were only 13,000; in 1650, 150,000, and from 1650 to the end of 1664 they grew to at least 254,980. The missionaries who furnished these sta- tistics at the verj^ period did not hesitate to give the correction of the calendar as the indirect cause of the progress of evangelization, although the ex- traordinary tokens of kindness which leather Schall received from the young emperor contributed a great deal. One of the most valuable of these tokens, especially from the Chinese standpoint, was the diploma, dated 2 April, 1653, by which Shun-chi expressed his lively satisfaction with the services rendered in the revision of the calendar and the direc- tion of the Board of Mathematics, and conferred on Father Schall the title of Tung hiuen kino shi, "most profound doctor". This diploma, written in Tatar and Chinese, the text being encircled with dragons and other carved ornaments, was delivered to the father engraved on a marble tablet. The tablet, which was recovered at Peking in 1880 by M. Deveria, who pre- sented it to the Jesuit missionaries of southeast Chih, measures eighty-eight by fifty-one inches. Father Schall appreciated still more the gift of a new house and a church for the building of which the emperor gave a thousand crowns. This was the first pubhc church opened in the capital since the coming of the missionaries; it was dedicated in 1650.

Some years later Shun-chi gave Father Schall and the mi.ssion a still greater gift, an imperial declaration praising not only European learning but also the law of the Lord of Heaven, that is the Chrisfian religion, and permitting it to be preacherl and adojited every- where. This declaration, made in 1657, was also engraved in Tatar and Chinese on a large marble plate and placed before the church. All his goodwill towards Christianity and the welcome which the young monarch acfX)rded to the discreet preaching of Father Schall, had inspired the latter with the hope that one day he would request baptism, but Shun-chi dierl (1662) before giving him this joy, aged at most twenty-four years. The child who was proclaimed his successor became the famous K'ang-hi and favoured the Christians even more than his father, but during his minority the government was in the hands of four regents who were enemies of Christianity. At the denunciation of a Mohammedan self-styled astron-

omer, Yang-koang-sien, Father Schall and the other missionaries residing at Peking were loaded with chains and thrown into prison in November, 1664. The.y were accused of high treason but chiefly of the propagation of an evil rehgion.

The principal charge against Father Schall was that he had shown to the deceased emperor images of the Passion of Jesus Christ. Brought before various tribunals the aged missionary, who had just been stricken with paralysis, could only reply to his judges through his companion, P'ather Verbiest. The first complaint against him was that he had secured the presidency of the Board of Mathematics in order that he might use the authority accruing from this high office for the propagation of the Christian Faith; Father Verbiest replied for him: "John Adam took the presidency of the Board of Mathematics because he was on several occasions urged to do so by the emperor. On a stone tablet, erected before the church, the emperor publicly attested that he raised John Adam, against the latter's wishes, to that dig- nity." Another complaint of the accuser — that Father Schall had badly determined the day on which a little imperial prince was to be buried — was set aside by the regents themselves for, on investigation, they found that the priest had never meddled with the determination of lucky or unlucky days. Finally, on 15 April, 1665, sentence of death was passed against Father Schall; he was condemned to be cut in pieces and to be beheaded. Almost immediately afterwards a violent earthquake was felt at Peking, a thick dark- ness covered the city, a meteor of strange aspect appeared in the heavens, and fire reduced to ashes the part of the imperial palace where the sentence was dehvered. The missionaries as well as the Christians could not but see Divine intervention in these events, while the superstitious Tatars and Chinese were terrified. In consequence the death sentence was revoked (2 May) and Father Schall was authorized to return to his church with his feUow missionaries. The venerable old man survived these trials a year, dying at the age of seventy-five, having consecrated forty-five years to the Chinese missions. Peace was not entirely restored to the Christian communities until 1669, when the young emperor assumed the reigns of government. One of K'ang-hi's first acts was to have the sentence against Father Schall de- clared void and iniquitous by the Tribunal of Rites and to order solemn funeral ceremonies in his honour, the prince himself composing for his tomb an ex- tremely eulogistic epitaph.

Father Schall worthily ended as a confessor for the Faith, almost as a martyr, a long life filled not only with great services to religion, but also marked by every virtue. All witnesses testify to this, and we might treat with contempt an infamous accusation directed against his memory nearly a century after his death. In 1758 was published for the first time, and afterwards reissued in several works against the Jesuits, a story according to which Father Schall spent his last years "separated from the other mis- sionaries and removed from obedience to his superiors, in the house given him by the emperor with a woman whom he treated as his wife and who bore him two children; finally, having led a pleasant life with his family for .some time, he ended his days in obscurity." This is reported by Marcel Angelita, secretary to Mgr de Tournon during his legation in China (1705- 1710), who died at Rome in 1749. The narrative gives no inkling of the source of this strange story. Its value may readily be judged by the manner in which it contradicts what has been related of the last days of Father S(hall according to contemporaneous wit nesses and even official Chinese documents.

Prior U) Angelita no one ever formulated or insin- uatecl such an a(!CUsation against the celebrated missionary. If what it presumes were true it could