Wise Man Of The West (Harvill Press Editions)

by Vincent Cronin

  Amid these preparations, in March his friend Li Chih-tsao the geographer, on a short visit to Peking from his provincial post, fell seriously ill. For nine years Ricci had laboured hard for Li’s conversion, incurring his colleagues’ criticism for devoting so much time to a man who, although convinced intellectually, “refused to give up his concubines for Christ.” Ricci saw further and persevered. After Paul Hsü, Li Chihtsao was the most brilliant Chinese he had met and his conversion could have momentous consequences. Now he persuaded the geographer, on what seemed his deathbed, to retain only his legal wife and baptised him with the name of Leo. The sick man promised, if he recovered, to consecrate the rest of his life to the Lord of Heaven, and meanwhile gave fifty taels to the mission. With this and other contributions Ricci decided to build a church adjoining the house, to replace the small chapel. He and De Ursis drew up plans of a European-style building, some twenty-five feet wide by fifty long, to be erected that spring.

  1610 was a year of examinations and homage to the Emperor. In April tens of thousands of magistrates and candidates poured into the northern capital. Twenty visiting-books were left at the house every day; on festival occasions a hundred. Ricci received all comers, whatever their rank, and within four days repaid their calls. Once he mentioned to a friend that the continual visits, with their elaborate ceremonial, proved exhausting to a foreigner.

  “In my country,” he said, “we are much less formal: if we do not return a call within a few days no one takes offence. But here it is absolutely necessary to visit everyone and to receive every caller.”

  “Let me give you a piece of advice,” his friend replied. “When someone calls and you are feeling tired, simply tell your servant, when he receives the visiting-book, to say that you are not at home. Even Confucius would excuse himself from seeing an unwelcome visitor on the ground that he was sick, although he enjoyed perfect health at the time.”

  This ruse Ricci was in no position to adopt. Since the days of Wang P’an the mission had depended for its existence on winning and retaining by every possible mark of courtesy the friendship of influential mandarins.

  In Lent visitors would often arrive during the single meal of the day, which Ricci refused to resume after their departure. Everyone of importance wanted to meet the Far Westerner and it was useless for Pantoja or De Ursis to deputise, since they did not have the same reputation. Correspondence, too, poured in from unknown men throughout China approving or disputing arguments in his books. They had to be answered personally in highly stylised phrases. Letters had to be written to Europe, to Nanking, Nanchung, Shiuchow and Macao, Chinese lessons given to De Ursis, sermons delivered every Sunday, confessions heard, spiritual advice given. Li’s illness and the erection of the church added to Ricci’s labours. And at the heart of each day Mass, his office and private devotions, giving life and value to the other activities, but demanding, also, the first fruits of his strength. Ricci did not flinch before the army of visitors and broadside of letters. He had sought and prayed for martyrdom: this was an unbloody, more refined form of death, a Chinese torture. Like granite by dripping water, his whole being was day after day eroded by the unending succession of visitors.

  Under the Dragon Moon, on the evening of May the third, Ricci returned to the mission house after a series of distant calls and went straight to his room. Removing his square black hat, his embroidered slippers and purple silk robe, he lay down on the hard brick-based kang and closed his eyes. That night his head throbbed more violently than usual. A never-ending stream of figures greeted him with a polite “Ch’ing ch’ing,” smiled an ironical smile and bowed themselves away; inane Chinese words shrieked each other down; gilded idols danced to the clavichord. He tried to find order in the horses’ hooves and haggling vendors outside, in the shelves of books, the maps, quadrants and astrolabes which lined the room, in the manuscript and papers neatly stacked on his desk. He struggled as he had done for many hundred nights, but this time the last reinforcements were dispatched in vain. Darkness fell, heightening the action within. Rest, instead of restoring order, made of his whole body pandemonium. He knew then that the branch was broken and would hang creaking helplessly until the wind tore it down at last.

  After a sleepless night he received a visit from De Ursis, to whom he confided his foreknowledge. “I don’t know which I feel more,” he said, “joy at the thought of going to God or sorrow at abandoning you and the mission.”

  Leo Li, informed of his friend’s illness, sent his own doctor, a court physician, to the mission house. He said Ricci’s sickness was a trifle which would soon pass, but the medicines he prescribed did not bear out his claim. Two days later Ricci had grown so much weaker that Pantoja called in the six most famous doctors of Peking. Unable to agree on a diagnosis, they left three different prescriptions. Some of the neophytes who crowded the house took the slips of paper and, laying them before the crucifix of the new church, implored God to indicate the best remedy, begging, at the same time, that years might be taken from their lives and added to Ricci’s. Finally a prescription was selected and administered.

  At the taste of ginseng, his bamboo-walled room became the apothecary’s shop at Macerata. Again he was watching his father dispense while the cries of his brothers playing rang through the courtyard; repeating Latin conjugations to Father Bencivegni; riding across the Apennines to Rome. Did that far side of the world still exist? Had he ever been part of it? The twin torrenti which tumbled astride Macerata had become the Tiber and Tagus, the Yellow River and the Blue: his life had been a journey by water under the stars. But the thought of dying in Peking no longer caused him regret. He knew now that he had not, after all, undertaken a journey without return and, when the last medicine proved no more efficacious than the first, in the downcast house Ricci alone remained cheerful.

  So that he could receive visitors more easily he was moved from his own bedroom to one near the main entrance. Here on Saturday May the eighth he made a general confession to De Ursis, throwing his net wide over a lifetime’s faults: grumbling on board the carrack; champing impatience at Goa; despair at Macao and Shiuhing and Tientsin; pride at Peking; bitterness towards the eunuchs; lack of forbearance with Pantoja; conceit in his predictions about Cathay; and the failure, again and again, to fly out like a flag wide and true before grace. Next morning when Holy Communion was brought into his room, alone, despite his weakness, he rose from the kang and knelt down on the floor before the white host. As he recited his last Confiteor he again remembered his failings and wept for shame, moving everyone in the room to tears.

  That afternoon he became delirious. For a day and a night he spoke distractedly of his converts, of the new church, of bringing the Chinese and the Emperor to God. On the evening of the tenth he returned to himself and asked for Extreme Unction. He repeated the responses in a clear voice while his eyes, ears, nostrils, lips, the palms of his hands—last marked with consecrated oil at Cochin—were anointed to remit all repented sin. The following day his four brethren—Pantoja, De Ursis and the two Chinese Brothers—asked his farewell blessing. Ricci made the sign of the cross over them and, as the custom was, added private encouragements to virtue. To Brother Emmanuel, whose trials he had come to know in the years at Peking, he said, “Persevere in your vocation. I shall ask Our Lord to let you die in the Society. I know now there is no greater joy than that.” Then De Ursis asked whether he realised how desperately they needed him. Ricci explained that his death would benefit the mission and added, “I am leaving you before an open door which leads to great merits, but not without great effort and many dangers.” Pantoja asked how they could repay his love for them. “With kindness to Fathers coming from Europe. They have given up the friendly surroundings of a college to come here: you must do more than welcome them: redouble your kindness, to make up for the affection they have left behind.”

  That afternoon his thoughts again returned to the other hemisphere of his life. He remembered a recent letter referring to the
work of Pierre Coton, a Jesuit who had gained the confidence of Henry IV to such an extent as to be appointed confessor to the King and tutor to the Dauphin, exerting the influence which Ricci himself had hoped to wield with the Son of Heaven.

  He turned to De Ursis. “I meant to write to Father Coton to congratulate him on the glory he has given to God, and give him news of the mission. That is impossible now: please write for me.”

  At six in the evening of May the eleventh 1610, turning on his side, Ricci closed his eyes, and the watchers began to recite prayers for the dying. “Unknown to thee be all that shudders in the darkness, and the hiss of flame, and torment and all anguish . . . Receive, O Lord, Thy servant into the place of that Salvation that he must hope for from Thy mercy . . . Deliver, O Lord, the soul of Thy servant, as Thou didst deliver Peter and Paul from their prisons . . . He hath had zeal for God within him, and faithfully hath he worshipped God who made all things.” An hour later, as the sun sank behind the western gate of Peking, so calmly that there seemed no transition, Matthew Ricci died.

  epilogue

  The End of the Mission

  At the request of the community in Peking, Brother Emmanuel, who had learned the elements of Western art in Macao, painted his late superior’s portrait in graduate dress. Even in death his face retained its colour and expression, so that the posthumous canvas destined for posterity was truer to life than the stylised sketch on silk which the Emperor possessed.

  Leo Li, as the missionary’s last spiritual son, provided a simple Chinese coffin of cedar wood three inches thick. Ricci’s body was laid in it and the wood sealed with varnish. On May the fourteenth it was carried into the new church, where so great a crowd came to attend the requiem that matting had to be laid on the courtyard for those who could not find place inside. Afterwards the body was taken back to the largest room and laid before a temporary altar, flanked by candles, the walls hung with white linen. Here all the Ministers, members of the Academy and chief mandarins came to pay their final respects, bowing four times before the coffin. The Minister of Rites let it be known that the Emperor, informed of Ricci’s death, had shown signs of grief.

  Since burial within the walls was forbidden, De Ursis and Pantoja intended to lay their friend in a field in the suburbs. But a Chinese Christian boldly suggested that they could pay Ricci greater honour and strengthen the position of the mission by obtaining a place of burial from the Emperor. It was true that no stranger other than ambassadors and only the greatest Chinese had ever been granted this privilege, but Ricci’s life had been exceptional and his gifts were known to have pleased the Son of Heaven. Leo Li and several other high officials promised to support the plan, but without much hope. A petition was drawn up and after some delay, to the general astonishment, approved by the Emperor. The missionaries were to be given land for Ricci’s burial as well as a new residence on the outskirts of Peking. After several months’ search they found a suitable property half a mile from the city, a large modern brick-built house belonging to a eunuch under sentence of death, which had been turned into a private place of worship called “Pagoda of Good Doctrine.” After a further delay and despite the opposition of the Dowager Empress, the villa was secured.

  Longobardo arrived to supervise the construction of a cemetery in the garden. At one end a hexagonal brick chapel was built, from either side of which a wall extended forming an enclosure. Here a tomb was dug, an idol from the former pagoda being broken up and crushed to make cement for the brick construction of the vault. Here, on the feast of All Saints 1611 under the Kindly Moon, Ricci was buried, Paul Hsü being one of the four who lowered his friend’s coffin into the earth. Above was set a plaque: “To one who loved righteousness and wrote books. To Li Ma-tou the Far Westerner from Huang Chi-shih, governor of Peking.” Eastwards in the distance gleamed the yellow roofs of the Forbidden City, but the bustle of the capital was here no more than a vague murmur. Beside the garden soared the rose-red walls of the pagoda converted into a mission house and chapel. Chinese emblems of mourning, motionless sentinels at each corner of the tomb, stood four tall cypresses.

  Shortly before his death Ricci had prophesied that he could best advance the China mission by dying. He foresaw that his body would remain in Peking, part of the Flowery Kingdom, proof that he had come from the ends of the world not to conquer but to give. His Chinese descendants, children born of water and the Holy Spirit, were already numbered by thousands: they would treasure his memory and honour his ideals. His spirit could do more for the mission in heaven than tied to a tired body on earth. But humility had hidden the full truth. After death Ricci’s fame as a saint eclipsed his status as Father—De Ursis, Pasio, Cattaneo and Leo Li all spoke of his sanctity. As primitive churches were built on the tombs of holy men and women, so on his bones the church of the Middle Kingdom arose.

  Ricci’s own methods were treated as guiding principles by his successors. He had been a great pioneer, point of convergence between East and West, the founder, the model. His most daring plan had been the attempt to win the Emperor if not to Christianity at least to an explicitly tolerant attitude. But Ricci had lived when the Ming dynasty was crumbling, the Emperor an inert monster at the mercy of parasites, so that the plan during his own life proved impracticable. It was for his successors to convert the successors of Wan Li.

  Three years after Ricci’s burial, as a consequence of a serious mistake by the Board of Astronomers in forecasting the eclipse of 1610, the missionaries’ friend at court, Leo Li, obtained a decree ordering De Ursis to reform the calendar and to translate European astronomical books. This task he undertook with the assistance of Paul Hsü, who continued to use his high office in the cause of Christianity. The decree was violently opposed by the eunuchs and not until 1630, when Adam Schall von Bell, a German Jesuit skilled in astronomy, arrived at Peking was the work of revision seriously undertaken.

  Before it could be completed China suffered an invasion of Tartars from the north-west. Already civil war and the growth of secret societies had indicated Heaven’s displeasure with the Ming. Corruption at court had reached a pitch where the chief eunuch allowed himself to be venerated on the same footing as Confucius. Peking fell; the Emperor, a grandson of Wan Li, butchered his harem and hanged himself from a tree in the palace grounds. Some of the Jesuits joined the retreating Ming court, which established itself at Canton. The Empress Dowager was converted and christened Helena, while the heir to the dragon throne was baptised Constantine, a name which revealed the missionaries’ expectations. But the tide had turned against the Ming; the new Tartar dynasty proved itself vigorous and efficient; before long the Jesuits’ hopes were once again transferred to Peking, where Schall had made a favourable impression on the new court. Soon he was appointed President of the Board of Mathematics and the authority which he gave the mission largely accounted for a rise in the number of Christians, at the time of his death, to a quarter of a million.

  At the end of the seventeenth century, France having won the hegemony of continental Europe from Portugal and Spain, French Jesuits began to arrive in China and for the next hundred years played a leading role at court. They were entrusted with the mapping of China; when the Emperor K’ang Hsi fell ill of malaria, they administered a new drug, Jesuit’s bark or quinine, recently received from colleagues abroad. Again, two of the French priests proved of great assistance to the Emperor in negotiations with the Russians who, under Peter the Great, were expanding eastwards in quest of sables and gold. Partly as a token of gratitude for arranging a suitable treaty, K’ang Hsi was persuaded in 1692 to take the momentous step of issuing an edict of toleration for the Christian religion. The work which Ricci initiated had been brought to fulfilment.

  The missionaries were pioneers not only in bringing Western science to the Orient, but also in revealing China to Europe. Ricci’s letters to his friends had been the prototype; now the French began to publish regular Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, translations of the classics, books of Chi
nese history, botany, geography and medicine, while their travels with the Emperor in Tartary confirmed and amplified the discoveries of Bento de Goes.

  Nowhere did these publications exert a greater influence than in the arts. As the force of classicism spent itself, Chinese styles moulded the new forms of rococo. But the influence, here as elsewhere, was second-hand and the imitations twice removed from the truth. Pagodas in European parks were not copied directly from Chinese originals but according to verbal specifications in missionary reports. At Worcester, Delft and Sèvres porcelain was produced in imitation of Chinese models yet remained unashamedly European. In drawing-rooms of lacquered furniture and painted screens tea was sipped in china cups “while o’er our cabinets Confucius nods, Mid porcelain elephants and China gods.” It scarcely mattered that the lovely pieces bore little relation to their originals. No one but the unreturning missionaries had been to China; no one cared for authenticity. Taste demanded the graceful and fantastic, a world of flowers and funny little figures. Cathay had been superseded by Chinoiserie.

  Amid such surroundings, the civilised minds of the day discussed Chinese philosophy and government, praised to the heights by missionaries who enjoyed imperial favour and wished to encourage interest in their work. The imagination of Europe was again captured by furthest Asia. Voltaire could claim without exaggeration that China was better known than some of the provinces of Europe. Confucius was venerated so highly that La Mothe le Vayer could taunt Sinophiles with the mocking invocation “Sancte Confuci, ora pro nobis!” while Leibnitz proposed in all seriousness that Chinese missionaries should be sent to Europe to propound the aim and practice of natural theology. The influence of European thought in China had never been so great as that which China, unknown to any but a handful of missionaries, now exerted on Europe. China appeared the land of tolerance, of virtue without Christianity, of philosophical rulers with charming manners, of Deism, of reason triumphant: the very ideal to which Europe must strive to conform. But another group of thinkers also found support for their theories in the Middle Kingdom, where the people believed in human equality and considered it not only their right but their duty to rebel against an immoral and tyrannical dynasty, against a ruler who violated the pattern of universal order. The Bourbons shared the fate of the Ming. When the calm, cultivated voice of Enlightenment had been shouted down by impassioned Progress, enthusiasm for the Orient waned. China, the revolutionaries pointed out, was a static society; for centuries she had made no important advances; her people were enchained by an obsolete morality. The rêve chinois faded away.