Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume II.djvu/354

310 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA, ETC. tired and sought an abode elsewhere. The establishment outside the town, in the cemetery where Father Ricci was buried, was preserved by the same means.

We have seen with what zealous haste the astronomers and mathematicians presented a new calendar to the chief of the rebels on the very day of his entrance into Pekin, and they were now no less anxious to be in time with the Tartar government. The same deputation set off again with the same ceremony; and when they were asked what they had to offer to their master, they replied, "We bring the ancient calendar of the Celestial Empire, now happily become yours, fully revised and corrected."

"We know," said the Tartar, "that your calendar is full of mistakes, and we have been told that it has been put in order by Tang-Jo-Wan, the celebrated astronomer from the West. Let Tang-Jo-Wan be called." That was not at all what the officers of " Celestial Literature" desired. They had intended to supplant Adam Schall, whose superiority had long been a grievance to them, and they had now the vexation of hearing him proclaimed as the reformer of their calendar.

In the month of September of this year, 1644, an eclipse of the sun took place, which afforded to the Tartars an incontestable proof of the knowledge of the European missionaries and the ignorance of the pretended official astronomers of the empire; after having found that only the calculations of Tang-Jo-Wan were correct, they appointed him master and president of all that concerned celestial literature. This decree was drawn up, presented by the Court of Rites, and duly signed by the young Emperor Chun-Tché, in the month of February, 1645.