China and Maritime Europe, 1500-1800 by Jr et al Wills

Author:Jr et al Wills [Wills, Jr et al]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781139007337
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2011-01-31T23:00:00+00:00

Papal Legations to China

In 1693 Maigrot, besides promulgating his directive against the Chinese rites, also sent a copy with an exposition of his views to Propaganda in order to institute a judicial process on the issue in Rome. For seven years (1697–1704) a special commission of cardinals pondered the conflicting interpretations presented by both sides. Once a digest of the material was completed, the cardinals and their consulters were expected to present their views. Then the Holy Office would make its decision. But this process took considerably longer than the spokesman for Maigrot, Nicholas Charmot, M.E.P. (1645–1714), anticipated, since other business kept qualified theologians from considering the case. Differences of opinion among lesser officials involved in the process led Charmot to influence the Holy Office in Maigrot’s favor. After reading Le Comte’s Nouveaux mémoires, Charmot observed that Le Comte had changed the traditional view of the Jesuits in China. Schall and Verbiest limited themselves to the same claim as Ricci, that is, that the rites were probably not superstitious. But in place of such a probability, Le Comte claimed, according to Maigrot’s spokesman, it was certain that they never had an idolatrous or even a superstitious significance. To expedite the decision in Rome, Charmot asked the archbishop of Paris, Louis Noailles, to present Le Comte’s views to the Sorbonne. Its prompt denunciation in 1700 contributed to some degree to the policy that Rome announced not many years thereafter.49

Later that same year, the Jesuits in Beijing, at the insistence of their confreres in Europe who alerted them to the debates taking place there, asked the emperor for a clarification of the rites issue. They wanted to know whether they were correct in stating that Confucius was honored as the master of all men but that no rank or happiness was sought from him, that ancestor veneration was intended as a sign of remembrance of the ancestors, and that the souls of the ancestors did not dwell in the tablets erected in their honor.50 The emperor replied that their statement on these matters was accurate. Not all the missionaries, including some Jesuits, considered such a request to the emperor a prudent tactic. But the Jesuits at court realized that interpreting customs so integral to the Confucian state was an imperial prerogative alone. In their view the emperor was not called upon to decide a question in Christian theology, but to explain what certain Chinese customs signified in practice.

None of these arguments were found convincing in Rome, for in 1701 the initial decision against Ricci’s method of inculturation was reached. Three years elapsed before a decree was made final in November 1704 accepting Maigrot’s arguments and confirming his prohibitions. As a consequence of the initial decision, the papacy planned to send a legate to China to investigate all ecclesiastical issues and, above all, to enforce the decree on the Chinese rites that would follow. Charles Maillard de Tournon, a bishop and later a cardinal, left Rome in July 1702 and arrived in Canton in April 1705.

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