A brief response on the controversies over Shangdi, Tianshen and Linghun by Niccolò Longobardo / Thierry Meynard, Daniel Canaris, editors.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

1.Claudia von Collani: The Genesis, Editions and Translations of Longobardo’s Treatise, Pages 1-26
This chapter reconstructs the background of Longobardo’s treatise through a detailed analysis of the texts on the Terms Controversy. It devotes particular attention to the role of João Rodrigues Tçuzu (1561–1633), a key figure in the connection between the missions of Japan and China. After arriving in China, he interviewed Chinese Christians and concluded that their understanding of God, angel and soul was mistaken. Collani argues that Rodrigues’ method of textual examination and interviews prompted Longobardo to launch his own investigation. Collani analyzes also how different manuscripts of the report were produced, and its role in the tense discussions in 1668 when almost all the missionaries in China had been exiled to Canton. The disagreements in Canton led the opponents of Ricci’s missionary policy to publicize Longobardo’s report in Europe.

2.Song Liming: The Identification of Chinese Non-Christian Literati and Reflections on the Dating of the “Resposta breve” and Its Place of Composition, Pages 27-44
This chapter contains the first systematic study of the non-Christian literati whom Longobardo interviewed for his report. Prior scholarship has focused on Longobardo’s discussions with Chinese Christian literati, particularly Yang Tingyun. However, Longobardo mentions also the names of sixteen non-Christian literati, of whom only one had been identified (Qian Linwu). Based on the information provided by the manuscripts and Chinese historical records, Song Liming has identified with certitude eleven of the sixteen literati. For the five remaining literati, Song hazards some possibilities. He infers from details about the positions of those literati that Longobardo held two rounds of interviews: a first round in Beijing around 1621–1625, and a second round in Nanjing and Hangzhou around 1625–1629. Song provides convincing evidence that the report had not been finalized in 1623, as previously assumed, but that Longobardo continued to revise it up until the very end of the 1620s.

3.Daniel Canaris: Longobardo’s Scholastic Critique of Ricci’s Accommodation of Confucianism, Pages 45-59
This chapter seeks to insert Longobardo’s report into its Renaissance intellectual context by considering how Longobardo’s polemic with Ricci’s accommodation of Confucianism reflects coeval European debates between humanism and scholasticism. Just as the European humanists attempted to discard the traditional commentaries of the Middle Ages and return to the original meaning of ancient texts, Ricci rejected the traditional commentaries of the Song dynasty and attempted to restore what he believed to be the authentic meaning of the Confucian classics by returning to the original texts of the Confucius. In contrast, just as the Renaissance scholastics interpreted ancient texts in continuity with medieval tradition, Longobardo interpreted the ancient texts of China in light of those very Song-dynasty commentaries that Ricci had rejected.

4.Thierry Meynard: Longobardo’s Reading of Song Confucianism, Pages 61-82
This chapter examines the Song commentaries which Longobardo considered important for a correct understanding of Confucianism. In particular, Meynard reveals that Longobardo’s understanding of what constituted canonical thought in late Ming China was highly idiosyncratic. Longobardo elevates Shao Yong as the representative thinker of the Confucian tradition despite the fact that Zhu Xi considered many of his ideas to be heterodox. Longobardo’s report provides the first European description of Shao Yong’s cosmological division between metaphysical and abstract realities (xiantianxue), and the concrete realities unfolding in the physical universe (houtianxue). Longobardo interprets his cosmology through the lens of Aristotelian concepts, and concludes that it was essentially materialist monism which does not allow for spiritual substances, thereby proving terminology indigenous to the Confucian tradition cannot convey the transcendence of Christian theological concepts.

5.Claudia von Collani et alii: Philological Note, Pages 83-90
This chapter explains the philological principles employed in our edition of Longobardo’s “Resposta breve”. In particular, it stresses our intention to represent as accurately as possible Longobardo’s intellectual contribution while giving a sense of how the text was manipulated during the Chinese Rites Controversies. For this reason, our edition has opted to base the English translation on Santa Maria’s Latin translation of Longobardo’s report located in the archives of Propaganda Fide in Rome (APF). This manuscript has been systematically compared against Longobardo’s Portuguese text, which has been reconstructed with Longobardo’s autograph (and significantly mutilated) manuscript found in APF and a copy of Longobardo’s text found in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF). This chapter also provides an overview of the most important manuscript and printed copies of the text.

6.Niccolò Longobardo: A Brief Response to the Controversies Over Shangdi, Tianshen and Linghun, Translated from Latin into English by Daniel Canaris and Annotated by Thierry Meynard, Daniel Canaris Pages 91-198
This report by the Jesuit Niccolò Longobardo, who succeeded Matteo Ricci as Superior of the Jesuit China mission, was one of the most controversial texts in the history of Sino-Western exchange. Ricci had attempted to use indigenous Chinese vocabulary to represent the Christian God, the soul and the angels. This approach was challenged by Jesuits arriving in Macau from Japan who feared that such accommodations could lead to heterodoxy among Chinese Christian converts. Influenced by these missionaries, Longobardo started compiling this report in the early 1620s using a combination of Chinese and Western sources, as well as interviews with Christian and pagan literati. The report was leaked in the early 1660s to the Franciscan missionary Antonio de Santa Maria Caballero, who forwarded it to Rome. The printing of this text in Europe had a decisive impact on the Chinese Rites Controversy and Enlightenment understanding of Confucianism.

Appendix 1: Transcription of Caballero’s Latin Translation, Transcribed by Claudia von Collani, Daniel Canaris, and Thierry Meynard
This appendix contains a transcription of the Latin translation of Longobardo’s “Resposta breve” by the Franciscan missionary Antonio de Santa Maria Caballero. Santa Maria commenced this translation soon after receiving a copy of Longobardo’s autograph Portuguese manuscript from Jean Valat sometime between 20 August 1661 and 12 October 1661. It was addressed to the cardinals of Propaganda Fide, who Santa Maria hoped would intervene to overturn the 1656 decree in favor of the Chinese Rites. He handed this translation, the autograph original and other documents to his companion Buenaventura Ibañez, who brought the documents to Rome on 20 April 1667. Overall, Santa Maria’s translation is a faithful translation of Longobardo’s Portuguese text, although many glosses are added to make Longobardo’s text more understandable for an audience ignorant of the Chinese language and to draw links between the text and the Chinese Rites Controversy.

Appendix 2: Transcription of Longobardo’s Portuguese Text, Transcribed and edited by Emanuele Landi and revised by Mário S. de Carvalho
This appendix contains a transcription of the original Portuguese text that has been reconstructed through a comparison of Longobardo’s mutilated autograph manuscript found in the archives of Propaganda Fide and a copy found in the archives of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Although this text has been dated to 1623—1624, there is evidence that further revisions were made to this manuscript as late as 1630. Originally, the text consisted of three parts, but only the first part of the text reached Santa Maria. Furthermore, the surviving manuscript only includes seventeen preludes; however, the index of the autograph manuscript gives evidence of an eighteenth prelude.

Local access dig.pdf. [Longobardo-Brief.pdf]

Includes Latin transcript of: ARSI, Jap. Sin. 158, "Controversiae variae: 1668–1698" ; ff. 51-61v: P. Adr. Grelon SJ. 1a via Cum nota authent. P. Lud. Da Gama, 10 dec. 1668.

Utrum ieiunantes Sinici volentes ad fidem converti obligandi sint ad solvendum ieiunium eique renuntiandum antequam baptismum suscipiant? nec ne? = "Whether Chinese fasters who want to convert to Christianity are obliged to break and renounce the fast before baptism?"

Summary:
From the beginning of the China mission, the Jesuits famously sought to accommodate Christianity to local culture by accepting practices such as the veneration of ancestors. The attempt by some Jesuits to tolerate Chinese vegetarianism is less known but deserves attention because of its cultural, anthropological and religious implications. The controversy which erupted in 1668 between the Jesuits Prospero Intorcetta (1626–96) and Adrien Grelon (1618–97) during the Canton Conference reveals two radically different understandings of the role of vegetarianism in Chinese society, as well as divergent implications for the Christian community. We shall first contextualise the controversy, the relevant documents in the Jesuit archives in Rome (ARSI), and the main arguments that were presented for and against the baptism of those who practise vegetarianism. Since recent scholarship has largely focused on the tenets of accommodation, we decided to translate the text of Grelon, an opponent of accommodation on the question of fasting, followed by the transcription of the original Latin text.

Local access dig.pdf. [Meynard-Fasting.pdf]

Michele Ruggieri's Tianzhu shilu (the True Record of the Lord of Heaven, 1584) / edited and translated by Daniel Canaris ; with contributions by Wang Huiyu, Wang Yuan and Wang Qi.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction / Daniel Canaris -- The life of Michele Ruggieri / Wang Huiyu and Daniel Canaris -- Critical Edition of the True Record of the Lord of Heaven /The Newly Revised True Record of the Lord of Heaven from Western India -- Vera et brevis divinarum rerum expositio/True and Brief Exposition of Divine Things -- Appendix : True Record of the Holy Religion of the Lord of Heaven.

"The True Record of the Lord of Heaven (Tianzhu shilu, 1584) by the Jesuit missionary Michele Ruggieri was the first Chinese-language work ever published by a European. Despite being published only a few years after Ruggieri started learning Chinese, it evinced sophisticated strategies to accommodate Christianity to the Chinese context and was a pioneering work in Sino-Western exchange. This book features a critical edition of the Chinese and Latin texts, which are both translated into English for the first time. An introduction, biography, and rich annotations are provided to situate this text in its cultural and intellectual context"--  Provided by publisher.

Text in English, Chinese, and Latin.

Local access dig.pdf. [Canaris-Ruggieri Tianzhu shilu.pdf]

"State of the Field Report XV: Contemporary Chinese Studies of the Scholastic-Aristotelian Soul in Late-Ming and Early-Qing China" / Daniel Canaris.

Dao 2024

Local access dig.pdf [Canaris-State of the Field Report XV Contemporary Chinese Studies of the Scholastic-Aristotelian Soul 2024.pdf]