Wise Man Of The West (Harvill Press Editions)

by Vincent Cronin

  “I have come to know Li Ma-tou. He is a man from the Far West, with a full beard and few words. I know all his writings and am convinced that he is truly an extraordinary man.

  “Because they are separated by a distance of a hundred thousand li (equal to that between heaven and earth) the Western countries and the Middle Kingdom could not communicate. But now Li Ma-tou has begun to bring them together. After travelling through hundreds of kingdoms and cities, only the Middle Flower has pleased him. Voyaging by sea past places infested with crocodiles, dragons, sirens and countless cannibals, Li Ma-tou remained quietly in his cabin oblivious of dangers. His religion honours virtue, esteems the five social relations and serves heaven; in his words he never contradicts the teaching of Yao, Shun, the Duke of Chou or Confucius.”

  The pen can convey one’s meaning for a thousand miles—so ran the proverb, but in Peking Ricci’s lay friends proved a more valuable means towards the hundred or more conversions he made every year. That summer, after an absence of five years, Li Chih-tsao the geographer returned to the capital. For the past three years he had been living in retirement at home, rivals having prevented his appointment to the higher office he deserved. Ricci continually urged him to re-enter public life, knowing what good he could do, for although polygamy prevented his baptism, he was a convinced Christian. Finally the geographer agreed to take up a comparatively minor post, and in August he and Ricci were reunited for a few months. He had converted most of his family and his followers were sympathetic to the new religion. The difficulties which lay in the conversion of one of the geographer’s suite, a wealthy courtier also called Li, were typical of countless others in the graduate class.

  Besides his legitimate wife Li the courtier was living with the concubine of another man. A possessive woman, when she learned that Li intended to become a Christian and leave her, she became furious, publicly abusing him and Ricci and the religion he taught. If he left her, she threatened to hang herself at his gate, a common enough act of revenge, because the person who caused the suicide was held responsible by law for damages and must reckon with the injured ghost of his victim. Li, who had an exaggerated respect for his good name, was afraid to put her away. Only when Ricci promised to take his part in the law courts and pointed out that even if the woman hanged herself the scandal would redound to his credit and that of Christianity, did he return his mistress to her legal owner, for whom he procured a remunerative appointment. As Ricci had foreseen, the shrew’s threat proved empty.

  Li the courtier also kept in his house a young girl whom he had been rearing from childhood as a future concubine. At Ricci’s insistence Li returned the girl to her father, saying he might marry her to whomever he pleased, that she was still a maiden and that he would reclaim neither the high price he had paid for her nor the cost of her maintenance during many years. This moved Li’s legitimate wife to such a point of admiration that she and all her family decided to become Christians. They sent Ricci their wooden and bronze idols, bellies crammed with votive offerings, gold, silver and pearls. The house was already so cluttered with josses that Ricci decided to have the metal ones melted down. When several foundries declined the task, he undertook it himself, using the wooden idols as fuel and obtaining a good supply of metal for globes and astrolabes.

  Li had been president of several Buddhist fraternities; one in particular, resentful of his conversion, spread the false rumour that he had embezzled the fraternity funds. Li, already bitterly criticised for ejecting ancestral idols, was completely crushed by this further scandal. On Ricci’s advice, however, he agreed to call a meeting and explain exactly what had happened. The members, believing that he was returning in remorse as president, welcomed Li warmly. He made a speech telling them what little fruit he had obtained from so many years’ service of idols; that he had decided to become a Christian in order to practise virtue in the years remaining to him. As his friends, they should praise not blame him. They had charged him with embezzlement: in fact he had used his own personal money for the fraternity expenses, but for every tael found missing, he would willingly pay back ten. The Buddhists, moved by Li’s frankness, admitted the truth of his statements and agreed he owed them nothing. After he left, the fraternity fell on evil days and began to break up, some of its members even following their president’s example.

  When all these difficulties had been overcome Li received baptism and the name of Luke. He asked Ricci whether the Christian religion did not possess confraternities similar to the one he had left. Ricci described the association at Rome to which he had belonged as a law student, and Li, with his friends’ help, drew up proposed rules for the first Chinese sodality of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Ricci emended them slightly, adding precepts about regular confession, prayers in common and the admission of new members by majority vote. One of its chief ends was to bury the Christian dead solemnly and ceremoniously, the cost being met by a monthly contribution from the sodality’s forty members. On certain feasts they provided the chapel with candles, incense and flowers, and on the first Sunday of every month gathered in the president’s house (Luke had been unanimously elected to this post) where one of the missionaries gave a sermon and answered questions. Four months later a similar sodality was established at Nanking.

  Spiritual direction of the Peking community allowed Ricci no time for writing new Chinese books, but his previous works grew steadily in popularity. The Ten Paradoxes, which some critics were hailing as a masterpiece of Chinese literature, continued to enjoy a particular success: in 1609 it was reprinted for the fifth and sixth times by mandarins in Nanking and Nanchang. Its author had become one of the sights of the capital. His purple-clad figure—full curling beard, long face and nose, even the tall black hat all emphasising his height and suggesting eminence—was pointed out with awe and also with affection, for it was becoming generally known that despite his wisdom Doctor Li was not grave and distant, but had a cheerful word for everyone and made a point of spending more time with humble visitors than with his intimate friends in the Government.

  Time and again Ricci became aware—with surprise, so ineffaceable were the years of oppression at Shiuhing and Shiuchow—that he had changed the meaning of the word “foreigner” from “contemptible barbarian” to “stranger worthy of special consideration.” For example, taxes on property were payable every year to the Emperor. Although in 1605 Ricci had submitted the deed of his new house in the usual way to be sealed—at a fee of six taels—by a special mandarin, no annual demand for taxes had ever been received and none had been paid. In 1609, however, tax lists were reviewed and Ricci received a summons to explain the arrears. He grew worried lest above what was due he might also have to pay a heavy fine for so long a delay. Discovering that collectors occasionally granted exemption as a personal favour, he wrote to a mandarin friend who knew the tax collector of the central district, asking him to try and obtain exemption “for a foreigner from distant lands.” At the mandarin’s request, the collector not only cancelled past claims, but also issued a public decree granting the house of the graduate preachers perpetual exemption from taxes. This was not only an indirect official acknowledgement of their right to be living in Peking but, as Ricci liked to phrase it, in a certain sense the beginning of ecclesiastical immunity.

  If it relieved him of payment in silver, fame exacted other more exorbitant dues. His circle of friends and acquaintances, already numbered by thousands, grew still further, while the line clamouring to meet the Far Westerner, to discuss this or that point in religion, mathematics, geography or music, stretched endless as a recurring decimal. In 1609 Ricci perceived with dismay what colleagues had already noticed: that the strain of an apostolate which demanded a multiplication of the self was beginning to weaken his health. Overloaded mind and will rebelled in the form of persistent headaches. His hair and beard were already white; though only fifty-six he felt old and tired out. Even the persecution of early years had been less exacting than the duties of prosperity at Pek
ing. He was carrying out the work of a dozen hard-working men and knew for certain that to continue would be to cut short his life. Of the pioneers Ruggieri had died in 1607, Valignano a year earlier, while Pasio had left China in 1583 for Japan. When he, the sole survivor, was laid on the terrace of night, what record would remain of the early foundations? He himself had listened angrily to garbled accounts of Xavier’s mission, the inflated miracles which debased the real, the exaggerations which eclipsed the so much more magnificent truth. He decided to set down in writing the history of the China mission “in order that if God should permit so small a seed to give a good harvest in his holy Catholic Church, the faithful of future generations may give Him thanks and speak of the wonderful things He has done to this distant people. If, however (which God forbid), these first flowers do not yield the promised fruit, at least I shall leave a record of how the Society of Jesus worked and suffered to blaze a trail, how they spent themselves unceasingly to bring the mission to its present hopeful state.”

  The history, which he entitled Della entrata della Compagnia di Giesù e Christianità nella Cina, occupied Ricci during the few spare hours of 1609. He had written a score of short Chinese books, but few gave him as much difficulty as this, because his mother tongue had become alien: before writing letters in Italian, he had for many years been obliged to refresh his memory by reading correspondence received from Rome. For this reason he chose an extremely simple, unadorned style fitting the straightforward narration of facts. Sometimes he wrote ungrammatically, at other times substituted Portuguese or Spanish words unconsciously or where the Italian escaped him, writing in his beautiful neat script, without crossing out, some fifty lines to each of a hundred and thirty-one folio pages, each headed with the emblem “IHS Maria.”

  In the first of five books he gathered together what he knew about China, its names and geographical position, its products, its arts and sciences, language, literature and system of examinations, its government, customs and superstitions and finally its religions. By collecting these data he avoided the necessity of interrupting the narrative to follow, provided a summary of the difficulties, direct and indirect, which he and his brethren had faced, and incidentally composed the first complete account of a country known to Europe only through inaccurate travellers’ tales.

  In the second book he described the first settlement at Shiuhing made by Ruggieri and himself as foreign bonzes, their friendship with Wang P’an, the first map, the adoption of Chinese names, their final expulsion by the Viceroy Liu. For these events of almost thirty years ago he found his own memory served well, and minute details could be checked from memoranda and notes for old letters. The chief events of the third book were the foundation at Shiuchow, the deaths of Almeida and his successor, the adoption of graduate dress, his first unsuccessful journey to Nanking and the residence at Nanchang. Book IV covered the years at Nanking, the fruitless journey to the northern capital, his mathematical school; while Book V was devoted to Peking, his attempts to meet the Emperor, the death of Brother Francis Martinez, Goes’s journey and a summary of recent events in the other houses.

  As he wrote out the manuscript, he lived again, with heightened intensity now that he was no longer protagonist, the whole course of those twenty-seven years in China, the failures and successes, fears and hopes, doubts and despairs. But personal feelings he allowed little place in the book, which was a history, complete, accurate, sober, recording facts and events, not processes or emotions.

  When he completed the bulk of the work, it was as though his life were done. What had been achieved in purely human terms? What had he a right to hope would survive him? The last few years had not in every respect been triumphal. Two missionaries had died: one of tuberculosis at Macao, the other in miasmic Shiuchow. Dias had been appointed rector of the college at Macao, leaving only twelve priests in China. Pasio, although supporting the mission to his utmost, had been unable to continue the supply of men which Valignano’s heroic efforts had ensured. To Ricci’s extreme disappointment, the often-requested astronomer had not arrived. The stir in Kwangtung province which had cost Brother Francis his life had put a halt to conversions in Shiuchow, and Ricci planned one day to move the missionaries to another town. Similar hostility prevailed at Nanchang. When the priests there had tried to buy a larger house, the bachelors had stirred up a furious attack. For a time they had been forbidden to make converts, and only Ricci’s influence with the governor had prevented their expulsion.

  On the other hand, Cattaneo, staying with Paul Hsü in Shanghai, had administered over a hundred baptisms, while a novitiate had been opened at Nanchang which counted four young Chinese, bringing to eight the number of Brothers. At the two capital cities both houses flourished. A hundred converts were made every year at Peking, and the Christians of China numbered about 2,500.

  In a recent letter Pasio had asked Ricci to ensure the safety of the mission against the time when he could no longer protect it with his immense personal authority. Night and day Ricci gave his mind to this problem. Pasio asked him, in effect, to obtain authorisation to preach Christianity freely in China: his own hope when he had first arrived in Peking. Ricci was reluctant to forward a memorial with this request, believing it might disturb the delicate balance of their present position, and knowing almost for certain that the Emperor could not grant so singular a favour contrary to all tradition. Paul Hsü, with whom he had discussed the problem, suggested that Ricci should decline the money he was now receiving and ask, instead, that he and his brethren might be permitted to remain in China as subjects of the Emperor. Ricci opposed this plan because nothing gave them such authority as being supported at the Emperor’s expense; and, again, to seek a more favourable settlement might result in their expulsion. He preferred to leave things as they were. Their security, paradoxically, lay in Chinese fear. Knowledge of China and Peking gave the graduate preachers power: as it were, an insight into the mystery at the heart of things. Expelled, they could use that power against the Middle Kingdom either alone or in alliance with the dreaded Japanese or Tartars. It would be less dangerous to allow them to stay. As for his death, which he felt approaching, that would be offset by Wan Li’s; he believed the heir to the dragon throne would prove more accessible. Certainly no tradition or law decreed that the Emperor should remain invisible.

  As far as he could foresee, two fundamental difficulties would remain. However closely his successors assimilated themselves to Chinese ways, they would always remain suspect because they preached a new doctrine opposed to the established order and had dealings with the outside world, through Macao to Rome. Neither danger could be completely removed, but he believed they could be lessened by emphasising that Christianity was a religion of peace, which encouraged a stable government and, secondly, by buying sufficient property within China to render the mission financially independent. Looking to the distant future, he hoped that the number of Christians in the provinces would grow to such a figure as to render impracticable any repressive measures an alarmed Government might take.

  His own experience gave him eight reasons for hope. First, miraculous progress in the face of immense difficulties seemed to show that God favoured the mission’s growth. Second, reason being prized above all in China, Christianity, a reasonable religion, appealed at an intellectual as well as a supernatural level. Third, the free circulation of books permitted a vast literary apostolate. Fourth, the Chinese, again in virtue of their intelligence, were open to conviction that Western metaphysics and theology, no less than mathematics and astronomy, were superior to their own. Fifth, he was convinced, not least from a study of their ancient beliefs, that they were essentially a pious people who had evolved a philosophy conforming, at almost every point, to natural reason. Sixth, peace would render Christianity, once established, more or less permanent. Seventh, by adapting themselves to Chinese psychology and etiquette, missionaries would undoubtedly be accepted as learned and holy men. Eighth, the system of Confucius provided an admi
rable ally against the idolatrous sects.

  These conclusions he set down in a final letter to Francis Pasio, colleague at Rome and on the voyages from Lisbon to Macao, now Visitor of the Province of Japan and China, and future strategist of the mission.

  Ricci now began to make preparations, in order to avoidburdening his brethren, for the aftermath of death. To transport his coffin from Peking to Macao would be costly and impracticable. He would prefer burial in Peking, to symbolise the mission’s permanency, and in January began to look for a piece of frozen ground which could serve as a mission cemetery, even in this final act accommodating himself to Chinese ways. He had almost concluded a bargain for a field outside the city when, inexplicably, negotiations were broken off. Ricci had come to recognise the deaf and dumb language of Providence and when his colleagues questioned him simply answered, “God will give us a better cemetery.” He set his correspondence in order and wrote two documents for his successors as superior of the mission and of the Peking house. The former he addressed to Nicholas Longobardo, Superior of the Mission of China: four years earlier he had proposed to the General that the indefatigable Sicilian should succeed to that office. These affairs concluded, he turned to De Ursis, asking him to enumerate all his defects against the general confession he would make in his last hours.