The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, written by Matteo Ricci.pdf
The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven
(2 reviews) Write a Review
$55.00
SKU: 1152
UPC: 9780997282313
Author: Matteo Ricci
Translator: Douglas Lancashire and Peter Hu Kuo-chen, S.J.
Binding: Cloth
Publication Date: 2016
Pages: 422 pages
ISBN: 9780997282313
Product Overview
For two thousand years explorers, merchants, missionaries, and diplomats have been building bridges between China and the West. In the late sixteenth century, Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit, initiated a more direct encounter between Chinese culture and Western Christianity, which has continued ever since. One of Ricci's most famous works, The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, was written in Chinese in form of a dialogue. In it, Ricci attempted to introduce Chinese literati to some of the fundamental ideas of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Based upon conversations Ricci had with Chinese scholars, this work allows us to get a sense of how he explained to his Chinese friends Western views about the purpose of life, human nature, and the existence of God. This revised bilingual edition of the first translation of Ricci's text into English (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1985) helps us, by means of a substantial introduction and footnotes, to situate Ricci's dialogue in its religious and cultural context.
Ricci adopted for his text a literary form well-established both in the West
and China, a fictitious dialogue between a Western and a Chinese literatus.
Ruggieri’s earlier True Record had similarly been structured in the form of
questions and answers, as catechisms often are, and presented philosophical
demonstration by reason alone of the existence of God and the eternity of the
soul, the story of revelation, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the basic
prayers. The True Record, however, was only marginally engaged with Confucian thought. Ricci’s True Meaning was instead more sophisticated. The device
of the dialogue was not simply a literary fiction, but actually reproduced the
flow of his actual learned conversations. While Ricci incorporated some materials found in Ruggieri’s text, a decisive inspiration came from a Latin text compiled by Valignano, the Catechismus japonensis, published in Lisbon in 1586
for the instruction of Jesuits entering the Japan mission and their Japanese
novices.
Ricci’s work should also be understood in its historical context. This book was
a war machine. As editor Thierry Meynard observes, “The agreement of Ricci
with neo-Confucianism was tactical, temporary and limited. After destroying
the intellectual foundations of Buddhism and Daoism, […] Ricci [attacked]
the foundations of neo-Confucianism [as well]” (73n93), especially what he
thought was its materialistic and pantheistic bent. To our modern ecumenical
sensibility, this approach looks quite suspect. Yet, in spite of these limitations,
and especially the misunderstanding of some key Chinese philosophical concepts like Non-Being, interpreted by Ricci as a nihilistic “nothing,” we must
admit that this was an extremely sophisticated attempt to bridge two traditions, even if with a clear ulterior objective. The book continued to be admired
for centuries and was republished many times and translated into several languages. It was also a labor that included many Chinese scholars. Ricci prepared
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Book Reviews
journal of jesuit studies 4 (2017) 679-753
684
a first version of the text and circulated it as manuscript in the years between
1596 and 1601 among his Chinese friends, asking for feedback. In 1603, a finalized version was ready, and with the financial support of the renowned official
Feng Yingjing, an orthodox Confucian and fiercely anti-Buddhist scholar, the
printing woodblocks were carved. One last round of corrections from friends
happened again before printing. Obviously, this shows that the final product,
while mainly from the brush of Ricci, was in fact also a collective work, where
several sympathetic scholars offered input and support. An exception might
have been the conversations held with two Buddhist opponents, the monk
San Huai in Nanjing in 1599, and the devout Buddhist Huang Hui in 1601. In
those conversations, Ricci presented himself as a winner over his opponents’
arguments. In fact, Buddhist critics took up the challenge, and wrote refutations of the anti-Buddhist rhetoric of Ricci, accusing him of misunderstanding
Buddhist concepts and of ignorance about the vast Buddhist canonical literature, accusations that were well founded. Ricci, when writing about Buddhism,
behaved as a Counter-Reformation polemicist, and did not take the adequate
time to study what he deemed demonic doctrines.
Only one copy of the 1603 first edition of the True Meaning of the Lord of
Heaven survives in the Casanatense Library in Rome, and it was used as the
editio princeps for the English version published by the The Institute of Jesuit
Sources in 1985, with an introduction and translation by the Jesuit Peter Hu
Kuo-chen and the sinologist Douglas Lancashire. The late Edward Malatesta,
S.J., founder of the Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History at the
University of San Francisco, was the editorial driving force behind that publication, jointly co-sponsored by the The Institute of Jesuit Sources (then in St.
Louis, mo) and the Ricci Institutes in Taipei and San Francisco.
The 2016 revised edition preserves the best features of the original 1985 edition, but also improves it through revisions by the French Jesuit Thierry Meynard, professor of philosophy at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China.
Meynard holds a doctorate in Chinese philosophy from Beijing University and
has focused his recent research on the Jesuit interpretation of Confucianism in
the early modern period. In 2015, for example, he published a volume on The Jesuit Reading of Confucius and the First Complete Translation of the Lunyu (1687)
Published in the West, in the Brill series Jesuit Studies. The 2016 edition of The
True Meaning contains the text in traditional Chinese and English, an updated
bibliography, a corrected “Translators’ Introduction” with new scholarship,
and most important, a great number of additional footnotes on philosophical
concepts, both from the point of view of the European Scholastic tradition
and neo-Confucianism. This new, handsome scholarly production of The True Meaning will no doubt become the new standard in English, and will be useful to yet another generation of Anglophone philosophers, theologians, historians of Chinese-Western relations and Jesuit history, and global historians. Eugenio Menegon Boston University emenegon@bu.eduDownloaded from Brill.com06/21/2021 01:39:51AM
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Book Reviews 685
journal of jesuit studies 4 (2017) 679-753
The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven
(2 reviews) Write a Review
$55.00
SKU: 1152
UPC: 9780997282313
Author: Matteo Ricci
Translator: Douglas Lancashire and Peter Hu Kuo-chen, S.J.
Binding: Cloth
Publication Date: 2016
Pages: 422 pages
ISBN: 9780997282313
Product Overview
For two thousand years explorers, merchants, missionaries, and diplomats have been building bridges between China and the West. In the late sixteenth century, Matteo Ricci, an Italian Jesuit, initiated a more direct encounter between Chinese culture and Western Christianity, which has continued ever since. One of Ricci's most famous works, The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, was written in Chinese in form of a dialogue. In it, Ricci attempted to introduce Chinese literati to some of the fundamental ideas of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Based upon conversations Ricci had with Chinese scholars, this work allows us to get a sense of how he explained to his Chinese friends Western views about the purpose of life, human nature, and the existence of God. This revised bilingual edition of the first translation of Ricci's text into English (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1985) helps us, by means of a substantial introduction and footnotes, to situate Ricci's dialogue in its religious and cultural context.
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Matteo Ricci
The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven [Tianzhu shiyi 天主實義], translated
by Douglas Lancashire and Peter Hu Kuo-chen, S.J.;
revised edition by Thierry
Meynard, S.J. Chestnut Hill, ma: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2016. Pp. 422.
Hb, $55.
Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), known in China as Li Madou (利瑪竇), is one of the
few foreigners who have gained a place in Chinese history, and whose name
many educated Chinese recognize. After four years in India, in 1582 Ricci
joined his confrère Michele Ruggieri (1543–1607) in Macao, at the order of
the famous visitor of the Asian missions, Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606).
Valignano implemented a program of cultural accommodation and linguistic immersion for missionaries in East Asia, and found allies in Ruggieri and
Ricci. To stay permanently in China, the two befriended officials in Guangdong
province, and at their suggestion, introduced themselves as Buddhist monks
from the West, shaving their heads and wearing the monk’s robes from 1583
to 1594. Ruggieri’s first exposition of Catholic doctrine, The True Record of the
Lord of Heaven (Tianzhu shilu 天主實錄, 1585), even used some Buddhist
vocabulary.
By the late 1580s, Ricci assumed the cultural leadership of the mission, and
started to shift towards the new identity of the Confucian literatus. He spent
much of his time reading and translating the texts of the Confucian tradition.
Following the advice of friendly literati, he also adopted in 1594 the silken
robes and hat of Confucian scholars. Ricci’s The True Meaning of the Lord of
Heaven (Tianzhu shiyi 天主實義, 1603) emerged out of this shift in identity,
but also out of a peculiarly favorable environment for new ideas in the late
Ming period. Once Ricci had sufficient linguistic command, and felt comfortable in the Confucian curriculum, he set out to impress the literati with a mix
of moral, religious, and scientific teachings, eventually dubbed Tianxue 天學
or Celestial Teachings. Confucian scholars in the late Ming prized the study of
ethical questions, a staple of Chinese philosophy for two millennia. Some of
them, moreover, were open to religious experimentation. Ricci was able to rely
on his knowledge of natural and mathematical sciences, Greek and Roman
philosophy, Christian theology, and the Confucian classical tradition, to engage important intellectuals, often in public fashion. By the mid-1590s, he had
left the deep south, moving to central China, and he tried in 1598 to establish
himself in the imperial capital of Beijing. After a setback there, he moved to
the secondary capital of Nanjing, in the great cultural hub of the Jiangnan region. By 1601, however, he left again Nanjing for the north, this time succeeding
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Book Reviews 683
journal of jesuit studies 4 (2017) 679-753
through literati and imperial patronage at remaining in Beijing, where he would
die in 1610. During these years, he took detailed notes of his conversations with
literati, especially in Jiangnan and Beijing, on several important moral themes:
the passing of time and the meaning of life and death; the attributes of a virtuous person; the importance of self-examination; the shape of the afterlife; the
harms of astrology; the evils of greed and stinginess; the fallacies of the Buddhist theories of reincarnation, vegetarianism, and the release of animal life.
These themes, eventually collected in The True Meaning, reveal that Ricci had
made a strategic choice: to ally with neo-Confucianism, the dominant intellectual ideology; to highlight components of the Confucian classics that seemed
to support Christian theology and ethics; and to wage a war on many practices
and conceptions of Buddhism, Daoism, and popular religions.
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doi 10.1163/22141332-00404008-02
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Goodreads
Justine
Nov 13, 2013Justine rated it liked it
Shelves: religion
This book is terribly difficult to find in English. I don't expect it to become tremendously popular any time soon. Luckily I have easy access to a gigantic theological library.
In this book, Matteo Ricci (still a candidate for Sainthood, but not yet) lays out his arguments for why 16th century Confucians in China should actually declare themselves Christians. He does so in Chinese, presenting arguments based on Confucianism as if Confucianism were just a slightly-misguided version of the same "True" Christian faith.
Let's give Ricci some serious points here for what he did: Learn Chinese. Write first dictionary from Western Language to Chinese. Study Confucian Scholarship. Write very long treatise in this foreign language that no one else in his Church speaks, trying to convince Confucians that the "true" path of their beliefs should actually lead them to become Catholics.
That is, adapting his faith to match the local customs and history.
All of these ideas! Big! Good job!
That said, to the modern lay reader, it's quaint, but not a deep read.
Lots of "my religion right, yours wrong", for fairly arbitrary reasons.
He really lays out his rejections of Buddhism and Taoism, often times with very unfair characterizations of the belief systems at hand (this may have been some sort of strategy in addressing his audience.)
It's fun to see some parallels and how far Ricci can "stretch" to make Confucianism and Catholicism map on to each other,
but it's more amusing than really interesting.
I will give points for his section on the "Cultivation of Virtue."
Why does one try to "be good"? What motivates people? Is man's natural tendency to cultivate virtue or is cultivating virtue an uphill battle?
Why /*should*/ one do so?
I found it to be the most interesting chapter, in some part just because it led to very interesting mental tangents related to his arguments, more than his arguments themselves.
TL;DR: This book is a big deal because of what it represented at the time, not exactly because of what it says in detail today. Context is probably fascinating to religious history scholars; quaint and hard to fully understand to the modern lay reader. Not much spiritual or philosophical insight beyond what one might learn studying either religion independently. (less)
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