Liam Brockey: When Celestial Kingdoms Collide (Vatican & China)
[Liam M. Brockey, an assistant professor of history at Princeton, is the author of the forthcoming "Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579-1724."]
ONCE again, one of the world's largest countries is at loggerheads with one of the world's smallest. Yet before thinking of David and Goliath, remember that in one way, both are equally large — China and the Vatican each claim the nominal allegiance of about a fifth of humanity. The recent standoff between these two powers over the appointment of bishops in China, and their broader struggle to normalize relations, is thus a matter of global significance.
But the conflict between the Chinese state and the Holy See long predates the Communist takeover in 1949, and Mao Zedong's edict two years later isolating Chinese Catholics. It has, in fact, been simmering for centuries, ever since the first papal envoy visited the Forbidden City in 1705. During two audiences with the Kangxi emperor in the winter of that year and the summer of 1706, the apostolic legate Carlo Tommaso Maillard de Tournon set the tone that has dominated Rome's relations with Beijing for 300 years.
At issue were the thousands of Chinese souls that had been claimed for the Roman Church as a result of decades of work by missionaries and their converts. The primary promoters of this enterprise were Jesuits, men who brought to China only their skill at learning languages and their powers of persuasion. Despite their small number — never more than 40 at one time — they managed to baptize hundreds of thousands of men and women and organize churches throughout the Chinese empire from Xian to Shanghai and Guangzhou to Beijing.
In order to keep themselves in the good graces of successive Ming and Manchu sovereigns, Jesuit priests also ran the Imperial Astronomical Bureau and tutored young emperors in math and music. ...
Almost a century before the famous Macartney embassy, during which the English ambassador refused to bow before the Qianlong emperor and endured a famous rebuke about the worth of English exports, Tournon was received in Beijing. He, too, came before the Son of Heaven with a proposal: a representative of Rome's choosing should administer Chinese Catholics, who must abandon the Chinese Rites.
Kangxi initially warmed to the first part of this deal but he stipulated that the representative be someone who knew China, like one of the local Jesuits. The prospect of a shadow bureaucracy controlled by an unknown foreign power was, understandably, unacceptable to the Chinese emperor.
But Tournon's view of Chinese ritual customs drew Kangxi's ire. After all, the emperor was the final arbiter in all matters relating to Confucian thought and the papal ambassador spoke not a word of Mandarin. How could someone so unfamiliar with China presume to make judgments about things Chinese? ...
It would take the Chinese church over a century to recoup the losses provoked by Tournon's legation. Now, Pope Benedict XVI contemplates his next step in negotiations with the powers that be in Beijing. While the moral and political terms of this struggle are vastly different than what they were 300 years ago, the fate of the 12 million Catholics in China today still hangs in the balance.
Read entire article at NYT
ONCE again, one of the world's largest countries is at loggerheads with one of the world's smallest. Yet before thinking of David and Goliath, remember that in one way, both are equally large — China and the Vatican each claim the nominal allegiance of about a fifth of humanity. The recent standoff between these two powers over the appointment of bishops in China, and their broader struggle to normalize relations, is thus a matter of global significance.
But the conflict between the Chinese state and the Holy See long predates the Communist takeover in 1949, and Mao Zedong's edict two years later isolating Chinese Catholics. It has, in fact, been simmering for centuries, ever since the first papal envoy visited the Forbidden City in 1705. During two audiences with the Kangxi emperor in the winter of that year and the summer of 1706, the apostolic legate Carlo Tommaso Maillard de Tournon set the tone that has dominated Rome's relations with Beijing for 300 years.
At issue were the thousands of Chinese souls that had been claimed for the Roman Church as a result of decades of work by missionaries and their converts. The primary promoters of this enterprise were Jesuits, men who brought to China only their skill at learning languages and their powers of persuasion. Despite their small number — never more than 40 at one time — they managed to baptize hundreds of thousands of men and women and organize churches throughout the Chinese empire from Xian to Shanghai and Guangzhou to Beijing.
In order to keep themselves in the good graces of successive Ming and Manchu sovereigns, Jesuit priests also ran the Imperial Astronomical Bureau and tutored young emperors in math and music. ...
Almost a century before the famous Macartney embassy, during which the English ambassador refused to bow before the Qianlong emperor and endured a famous rebuke about the worth of English exports, Tournon was received in Beijing. He, too, came before the Son of Heaven with a proposal: a representative of Rome's choosing should administer Chinese Catholics, who must abandon the Chinese Rites.
Kangxi initially warmed to the first part of this deal but he stipulated that the representative be someone who knew China, like one of the local Jesuits. The prospect of a shadow bureaucracy controlled by an unknown foreign power was, understandably, unacceptable to the Chinese emperor.
But Tournon's view of Chinese ritual customs drew Kangxi's ire. After all, the emperor was the final arbiter in all matters relating to Confucian thought and the papal ambassador spoke not a word of Mandarin. How could someone so unfamiliar with China presume to make judgments about things Chinese? ...
It would take the Chinese church over a century to recoup the losses provoked by Tournon's legation. Now, Pope Benedict XVI contemplates his next step in negotiations with the powers that be in Beijing. While the moral and political terms of this struggle are vastly different than what they were 300 years ago, the fate of the 12 million Catholics in China today still hangs in the balance.