Page:Eminent Chinese Of The Ch’ing Period - Hummel - 1943 - Vol. 2.pdf/288

 attacked was the Emperor's favorite Grand Secretary, Wên T'i-jên (see under ). Realizing that, in case his charges were not sustained, he might incur the death penalty, he carried his coffin with him. His life was spared, but he was flogged and banished to Liaotung, where he remained until about 1644—being freed after the fall of the Ming Dynasty. Thereafter he seems to have lived in Nanking for a number of years and, beginning about 1659, assumed the self-appointed role of a campaigner against Western missionaries.

At this time the leading missionary in Peking was the German Jesuit, Father Adam Schall von Bell 湯若望, who had been one of the translators of Western books on astronomy and the calendar at the Ming Court (see under ), and had remained in Peking after the fall of the Dynasty. In August 1641 he was asked by the Manchu Regent,, to prepare for the new regime a calendar based on Western mathematical calculations, which came to be known as Shih-hsien li 時憲曆. After supervising for some time the Imperial Board of Astronomy he was named the director. Under the first Ch'ing Emperor, Shih-tsu, he was granted additional favors. In 1650 he was permitted to erect a church near the Calendrical Bureau inside the Hsüan-wu Gate (see under ). The building was completed in 1652 and came to be known as the Nan-t'ang, or South Church. In 1653 he was given the title, T'ung-hsüan chiao-shih 通玄教師, i.e., "The Religious Teacher Who Comprehends the Mysterious"—a title altered, after 1661, to T'ung-wei (微) chiao-shih, to avoid use of the personal name of Emperor Shêng-tsu—the character wei meaning ("infinitesimal").

Disgruntled Moslem functionaries in the Board of Astronomy watched Schall with jealousy and schemed for his removal. They were balked, however, in every move because their calculations invariably proved to be less dependable than those of the European. In 1657 one of them, Wu Ming-hsüan 吳明炫, accused Schall of having made several faulty predictions. It turned out that Wu's accusations proved to be unfounded and he was punished by several months' imprisonment. It seems that after his release he and Yang cooperated in their attack on the missionaries, and Wu supplied Yang with a smattering of astronomical information. From 1659 on Yang wrote a number of treatises denouncing the Christian religion and criticizing the calendar made by Schall. In June 1660 he presented to the Board of Ceremonies a document attacking Schall, but he was ignored. On January 3, 1661, he tried again and once more was unsuccessful. After Emperor Shih-tsu died (February 5, 1661) Schall continued to enjoy favors under the Regents (see under ) for three more years. On the occasion of his seventy-first birthday (April 29, 1661), he was presented with congratulatory essays hy several high officials—among them, and. Later in that year when Schall's adapted son, T'ang Shih-hung 湯士弘 (original surname P'an 潘), was granted the privileges of a student of the Imperial Academy, more greetings came to Schall, among them two essays: one by and another by Grand Secretary Hu Shih-an 胡世安.

In the meantime Yang Kuang-hsien relentlessly carried on his campaign against the missionaries. On September 15, 1664, he submitted to the Board of Ceremonies a document in which he charged Schall with several errors in astronomical calculations, and accused the missionaries, with their "million followers" scattered throughout the land, of plotting against the state, and of indoctrinating the people with false ideas. One piece of evidence he cited was a pamphlet on the history of the Christian Church in China, entitled 天學傳概 T'ien-hsüeh ch'uan-kai written in 1663 by a convert, Li Tsu-po 李祖白, with a preface written in February 1665 by a censor, Hsü Chih-chien (see under ). Li, or his Western collaborators, developed a theory that man had originated in Judea and that a branch of the human family had migrated to China under a leader whom Li tentatively identified as Fu-ho 伏羲 he asserted, moreover, that God had been worshipped in ancient China under the name T'ien 天, or Shang-ti 上帝; and that this worship, known as T'ien-hsüeh, had been lost in the Chou period and had been revived by Ricci and other missionaries. To Yang Kuang-hsien this theory was repugnant because it implied Chinese descent from the Hebrews, a foreign race. Among other evidences which Yang produced were the religious articles used by converts, such as the Christian cross, religious tracts, identification cards, etc., which, according to Yang, were to be used for purposes of identification should an uprising occur. Such evidence would have been ignored by the Board 890