Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/556

Rh 530 RICCI RICCI, MATTEO (1552-1610), is eminent as practically the founder of Christian missions in modern China. He was born of a noble family at Macerata in the March of Ancona on 7th October 1552, two months before Francis Xavier, burning with the desire to carry his message into China, died at its gates. After some education at a Jesuit college in his native town, Ricci, at the age of sixteen, was sent by his father to study law at Rome. But the youth had already contemplated entering the Jesuit Company, and this purpose he accomplished about 1571, without informing his father, of whose opposition he was aware, until the step had been taken. The father instantly started for Rome, but was stopped by illness, and abandoned opposition. In 1577 Ricci and several other Italian students of noble birth offered themselves for the East Indian mis- sions ; and Ricci, without visiting his family to take leave, proceeded to Portugal. His comrades, were Rudolf o Acquaviva, Nicolas Spinola, Francesco Pasio, and Michele Ruggieri, all afterwards, like Ricci himself, famous in the Jesuit annals. They arrived at Goa in September 1578. After four years spent in India, Ricci was summoned to the task of opening China to evangelization. Several attempts had been made by Xavier, and since his death, to introduce the church into China, as by Melchior Nunes of the Jesuit society operating from Sanchian 1 in 1555 ; by Gaspar da Cruz, a Dominican, in that or the following year ; by the Augustinians under Martin Herrada, 1575; and in 1579 by the Franciscans led by Pedro d'Alfaro; but all these attempts proved abortive. In 1571 a house of the Jesuits had been set up at Macao (where the Portuguese were established in 1557), but their attention was then occupied with Japan, and it was not till the arrival at Macao of Alessandro Valignani on a visitation in 1582 that work in China was really taken up. For this object he had obtained the services first of M. Ruggieri and then of Ricci. After various disappointments they found access to Chau-king- fu on the Si-Kiang or West River of Canton, where the viceroy of the two provinces of Kwang-tung and Kwang-si then had his residence, and by favour of this personage they were enabled to establish themselves, and there spent several years. Their proceedings were very cautious and tentative ; they excited the curiosity and interest of even the more intelligent Chinese by their clocks, their globes and maps, their books of European engravings, and by Ricci's knowledge of mathematics, including dialling and the like, and the projection of maps. They conciliated some influential friends, and their reputation spread pretty widely in China. This was facilitated by the Chinese system of transfer of public officers from one province of the empire to another, and in the later movements of the missionaries they frequently met with one and another of their old acquaintances in office, who were more or less well disposed. Eventually troubles arose at Chau-king which compelled them to seek a new locality ; and in 1 589, with the viceroy's sanction, they migrated to Chang- chau in the northern part of Kwang-tung, not far from the well known Meiling Pass. During his stay here Ricci was convinced that a mistake had been made in adopting a dress resembling that of the bonzes, thus identifying the missionaries with a class who were the objects either of superstition or of contempt. With the sanction of the visitor it was ordered that in future the missionaries should adopt the costumes of Chinese literates. And, in fact, they before long adopted Chinese manners altogether. 1 The island (properly Shang-chuan) on which the Portuguese had a temporary settlement before they got Macao, and on which F. Xavier died. Chang-chau, as a station, did not prove a happy selec- tion, but it was not till 1595 that an opportunity occurred of travelling northward. We cannot follow Ricci's move- ments in detail, or the vicissitudes of favour and trouble which attended his plans. The latter were, on the whole, never very grave. For some time his residence was at Nan-chang-fu, the capital of Kiang-si ; but in 1598 he was enabled to proceed under favourable conditions to Nan- king, and thence, for the first time, to Peking, which had all along been the goal of his missionary ambition. But circumstances were not then propitious, and the party had to return to Nanking. The fame of the presents which they carried had, however, reached the court, and the Jesuits were summoned north again, and on the 24th January 1601 they entered the capital. Wan-lieh, the emperor of the Ming dynasty, in those days lived in seclu- sion, and saw no one but his women and the eunuchs. But the missionaries were summoned to the palace ; their presents were immensely admired ; and the emperor had the curiosity to send for portraits of the fathers them- selves. They obtained a settlement, with an allowance for sub- sistence, in Peking, and from this time to the end of his life Ricci's estimation among the Chinese was constantly increasing, as was at the same time the amount of his labours. Visitors, who were never turned away, thronged the mission residence incessantly; inquiries coming to him from all parts of the empire, from strangers as well as acquaint- ances, respecting the doctrines which he taught, or the numerous Chinese publications which he issued, had to be answered. This in itself was a great burden, as Chinese composition, if wrong impressions are to be avoided, demands extreme care and accuracy. As head of the mission, which now had four stations in China, he also devoted much time to answering the letters of the priests under him, a matter on which he spared no pains or detail. The new converts had to be attended to always welcomed, and never hustled away. Besides these came the composi- tion of his Chinese books, the teaching of his people, and the maintenance of the record of the mission history which had been enjoined upon him by the general of the order, and which he kept up to the most recent dates. Thus his labours were wearing and incessant. In May 1610 he broke down, and after an illness of eight days died on the llth of that month, aged fifty-eight. His coadjutor Pantoja applied to the emperor for a burying-place outside the city. This, after due consideration by the boards concerned, was granted, with the most honourable official testimonies to the reputation and character of Ricci ; and a large building in the vicinity of the city was at the same time bestowed upon the mission for their residence. Ricci's character, his acquirements, and the use he made of them were certainly worthy of all honour. We do not know what amount of success in conversion had rewarded his labours during his life, but some eminent and creditable converts there were, and his work was the foundation of the considerable spread which the Roman Catholic Church has since attained in China. "When the missionaries of other Roman Catholic orders made their way into China, some twenty years after the death of Ricci, they found great fault with the manner in which certain Chinese practices had been dealt with by the Jesuits, a matter in which Ricci's action and policy had given the tone to the mission in China, though in fact that tone was rather inherent in the Jesuit system than the outcome of individual character, for controversies of an exactly parallel nature arose two generations later in southern India, between the Jesuits and Capuchins, regarding what vn- called "Malabar rites." The controversy thus kindled in China burned for considerably more than a century with great fierceness, 8 and we can here, in connexion with the career of Ricci, but indicate its existence. The chief points of controversy were (1) the lawfulness and expediency of certain terms employed by the 8 The list of the literature of this controversy occupies forty-one columns in M. Cordier's excellent Bibliographic de la Chine.