Chinese Rite Controversy

[Tiberge, Louis / Brisacier, Jacques-Charles]. Lettre de messieurs des missions étrangeres au pape, sur les idolatries et superstitions chinoises.

€ 4.800,00

First complete printing: includes Brisacier's "Revocation", Tournon's report on his audience with the K'ang-hsi emperor, Maigrot's report to the Missions Etrangeres, and and a reiteration of the papal decree of 1645, papers omitted by other issues. Page 99 gives Paris, 20 April 1700, as place and date of the submission of Tiberge's work.

Tiberge and Brisacier were joint directors of the Mission Étrangeres de Paris, an independent body of evangelical missionaries founded in 1685, not attached to any religious order and operating largely in Southeast Asia and China. While vehemently anti-Jesuit, it shared the Jesuits' strategy of adapting to local customs and traditions. Brisacier was also a member of the Sorbonne, which issued its own censure of the Jesuits early in 1700, and his short "Revocation" counters the longer work of the Jesuit Michel le Tellier, "Defense des Nouveaux Chrestiens at des Missionaires de la Chine" (1687). Charles Maigrot's report on the precarious state of Jesuit affairs in China is followed by that of Charles Tournon on his audience with the emperor K'ang-hsi in 1681.

From the first issue of Matteo Ricci's "Directives" in 1600 and 1603 to the Jesuits' suppression in 1773, a protracted and acrimonious controversy ensued between Rome, the Society of Jesus and other religious orders over the interpretation of T'ien-chu ("Lord of Heaven") and the accommodation of Confucian rites in Catholic practice. In line with early 17th century Christian humanism, Ricci equated T'ien-chu with God, holding that the rites and veneration of ancestors were not idolatrous. A long and heated pamphlet war ensued, fueled by missionary rivalries largely between the Dominicans, the Propaganda Fide of Rome, and the Jesuits, over toleration of these rites. Rome first restricted use of the Rites by the Jesuits in 1645; then in 1656 allowed that local custom be respected. For over 100 years successive popes both condemned and condoned Jesuit interpretation and practice of the Rites by Chinese converts. Along with other Dominicans, Fernando de Navarette, in China from 1657 and virulently anti-Jesuit, called for a more robust response from Rome. In 1692 the Ch'ing emperor K'ang-hsi, a scholar and reformer, issued an edict of toleration regarding Christian conversions, but required all missionaries in China to sign a declaration that ancestor worship and public homage to Confucius were civil rather than religious ceremonies and could continue to be practised by converts, echoing Ricci. While most Jesuits signed, the Dominicans and Franciscans did not. Damning reports on the state of the Jesuit missions by Bishop Charles Maigrot of the Missions Etrangeres de Paris in China and by Charles Toumon, papal legate to China in 1681, were presented to Rome, and in 1700, following other universities' pronouncements, the Sorbonne issued a strongly worded censure of the Jesuits. By 1773 Rome finally chose to preserve strict Catholic doctrine and outlaw any use of the Rites, at the expense of losing converts. The Jesuits were expelled, and the Society of Jesus was not restored until 1814.