Fung de Santa Maria, Juan Bautista, Chinese Dominican and venerable martyr (1719-1755). Autograph document signed.

€ 4,000.00

An oath renouncing the practice of the Chinese rites, taken by the Chinese Dominican as required by the Papal Bull "Ex Quo Singulari" (1742). The oath was sworn on the Bible, and a form signed in one's own hand ("manu propria") had to be produced as evidence.

Born Feng Shiming in a small village near Fu'an, Fujian province, Fung was the first Chinese student admitted to the Dominican Colegio de San Juan de Letran in Manila in 1736. Fung took his vows on 3 June 1744 and graduated in 1747. On 12 November 1747, Fung arrived in Zhangzhou, Fujian, and started his missionary work. During a severe wave of persecution starting in March 1754, Fung was among the missionaries arrested and eventually sentenced to permanent exile in Jiangxi. The following 14-month journey in chains and shackles contributed to Fung's premature death in a cell in Jiangxi in July 1755, within a month of his arrival.

During the early years of their mission to East Asia, the Jesuits led by Matteo Ricci accommodated Catholicism to Chinese customs and Confucian practice in important ways, both for political reasons and in the hope of attracting more converts. Criticism of this syncretism is as old as the Chinese rites themselves, and Ricci's immediate successor Niccolò Longobardo attempted to change course, which led to his replacement as provincial. When Dominican and Franciscan missionaries entered China, they reported to Rome critically on the Jesuit practices. A first condemnation was decreed by Pope Clement XI in 1704 and confirmed in the 1715 Bull "Ex Illa Die". In reaction to the condemnation, the Kiangxi Emperor, who initially tolerated the Christian missionaries and had especially good relations with the Jesuits, officially forbade Christian missions in China. In 1721, Carlo Ambrosio Mezzabarba, the Latin Patriarch of Alexandria, was sent to Macau and Beijing as a Papal legate. Despite the concession of "eight permissions" regarding the practice of the Chinese rites, officiated in a pastoral letter to the missionaries from 4 November 1721, the Emperor did not revoke the ban. Finally, in "Ex Quo Singulari", Pope Benedict XIV re-affirmed the 1715 Bull and required all missionaries in the region to take the oath renouncing the practice of Chinese rites.

A transcription and translation of the document are available on request.