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Matteo Ricci

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Matteo Ricci (left) and Xu Guangqi(徐光啟) (right) in the Chinese edition of Euclid's Elements (幾何原本).

Map of the Far East by Matteo Ricci in 1602.

Matteo Ricci.

Matteo Ricci (October 6, 1552 - May 11, 1610) (Chinese: 利瑪竇, pinyin: Lì Mǎdòu, courtesy name:西泰 Xītài) was an Italian Jesuit priest whose missionary activity in China during the Ming Dynasty marked the beginning of modern Chinese Christianity. He is still recognized as one of the greatest missionaries to China. The church he built remains the largest Catholic church to survive the Cultural Revolution.

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Biography

Born in 1552 in Macerata, then part of the Papal States, Ricci started learning theology and law in a Roman Jesuits' school. In 1577, he filed an application to be a member of a Missionary to India, and his journey began in March 1578 from Lisbon, Portugal. He arrived in Goa, a Portuguese Colony, in September 1578, and four years later he was dispatched to China.

In 1582, he started learning the Chinese language and customs in Macao, a Portuguese settled land in Southern China, and became a rarely seen Western scholar who mastered Chinese classical script. He moved to Beijing in 1601, where he presented himself at the Imperial court of Wanli.

Not only could he write in ancient Chinese, he was also renowned for his great understanding of Chinese culture. Unlike missionaries in South Asia, he found that Chinese culture was strongly tied to Confucian values, and he concluded that Christianity had to be adapted to Chinese culture in order to take root.

In his early life in China, he had referred to himself as a Western Monk (西僧). He later discovered that Confucian thought was dominant in the dynasty in China. Ricci became the first to translate the Confucian classics into a western language, Latin; in fact "Confucius" was Ricci's own Latinisation. He came to call himself a "Western Confucian" (西儒). The credibility of Confucius was to make Christianity take root.

With the introduction of Western science and state-of-the-art gadgets like an automatic clock and a world atlas, he attracted the attention of some traditional Confucian literati and officials. In 1607, he and Chinese Catholic mathematician, Xu Guangqi, translated the first parts of Euclid's Elements into Chinese. Ricci's work on a Chinese language atlas of the world included coining Chinese names for European countries, many of which are still in use in Chinese today.

In a debate, he argued that Confucian ancestor worship was nothing more than the demonstration of remembrance and respect to ancestors: it was not a matter of paganism. His view was praised by Chinese scholars but disapproved of by other competing churches. Others argued that ancestor worship was a cult and had to be prohibited. Ironically, the long debate finally resulted in all Catholics being banned after a series of conflict between Pope Innocent XIII and Emperor Kangxi of Qing dynasty. All missionary work went underground until the Opium War in 1841.

Ricci also met a Korean emissary to China, Yi Su-gwang. Ricci taught Yi Su-gwang the basic tenets of Catholicism and transmitted western knowledge to him. Ricci gave Yi Su-gwang several books from the west, which became the basis of Yi Su-gwang's later works. Ricci's transmittance of western knowledge to Yi Su-gwang influenced and helped shape the foundation of the Silhak movement in Korea.

Ricci introduced many aspects of China to Europe, generally in a favorable light.

He died in Beijing and his contribution was fully recognized by the Emperor Wanli. He was buried in what is now the School of Beijing Municipal Committee. Life magazine named Ricci one of the 100 most important people of the last millennium.

Riccius crater on the Moon is named in his honor, as are the following: Ricci Hall, a dormitory at Hong Kong University, Matteo Ricci College at Seattle Preparatory School and Seattle University, and the Sekolah Katolik Ricci in Indonesia (located in Pancoran, China Town of Jakarta).

Ricci's cause of beatification has been completed at the diocesan level.

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