300 years after Marco Polo arrived at the court of Kublai Khan, yet another Italian, a Jesuit priest by the name of Matteo Ricci, stepped ashore at Macao in China. The year was 1582, and although Christian missionaries previously had had little success in China, and Christianity would never gain a very strong foothold, the scientific knowledge brought to China by Ricci and others had some impact.
Possibly even more interesting than the sharing of knowledge between Ricci and the Chinese were the perceptions each formed of the other. Using Jesuit precedence, before Ricci even began speaking of Christianity he learned to speak Chinese, donned the garb of a Chinese scholar and became familiar with Chinese customs. He also eventually took a Chinese name.
Born in 1552, Ricci traveled to Rome in 1568 to study law, mathematics and astronomy. By 1580 he was in the city of Goa in India and had been ordained a Jesuit priest. In 1582 he set out for China and began the daunting tasks of both learning the Chinese way of life and teaching his own knowledge to any who would listen. It says something about the man himself that not only did quite a few listen to him, but that he managed the rare feat of eventually being allowed to live and teach in the city of Peking (Beijing), which was closed to most foreigners. He published many books during his time in China, which would in fact be for the rest of his life until he died in 1610. He also kept a journal, and it is this volume which provided Europeans with the clearest glimpse of life in China during the Ming Dynasty. The following passages are from his journal which was published shortly after he died. I have excerpted from The Human Record: Sources of Global History, edited by Alfred Andrea and James Overfield, and my comments are bracketed.
The most renowned of all Chinese philosophers was named Confucius. This great and learned man was born five hundred and fifty-one years before the beginning of the Christian era, lived more than seventy years, and spurred on his people to the pursuit of virtue not less by his own example than by his writings…Indeed, if we critically examine his actions and sayings as they are recorded in history, we shall be forced to admit that he was the equal of the pagan philosophers and superior to most of them. He is held in such high esteem by the learned Chinese that they do not dare to call into question any pronouncement of his and are ready to give full recognition to an oath sworn in his name… [To understand anything about China during this time period it is essential to understand Confucius, and Ricci obviously knew this.]
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