The Forgotten Christians of Hangzhou by D. E. Mungello (review)

BOOK REVIEWS747 tury benefited from the research of Georg Schurhammer,Josef F. Schutte, and the recent volume byJ. F. Moran. The book's second haU centers on China with two chapters on Ricci, one on Johann Adam SchaU von BeU and FerdinandVerbiest, then one on the pope, the Bourbon kings, and the Kangxi emperor, and a conclusion. Throughout these pages on China Ross contends that it was "ultimately the Church's denial of the vaUdity of the way ofVaUgnano and Ricci that led to [the emperor] Kangxi and China's rejection of Christianity."WhyVaUgnano is included m this quotation is unclear since the sources cited did not examine aU of Valignano's extant correspondence about China. More than a dozen simUar scholarly problems cannot be discussed Ui this review. But any reader wiU be puzzled by footnotes that at times lack fuU book citations which are not clarified in the bibUography and also by a number ofJapanese given names cited as surnames Ui the index. Ross indicates that individual ItaUanJesuits formed by their Lgnatian training "created the vision that shaped the Christian century in Japan and the Confiicianist Christianity" of Ricci. But then he adds, "To say that the vision was betrayed is perhaps too harsh." This raises questions about the book's title and ultimately about who betrayed whom, that is, whether the Jesuits betrayed the Church or vice versa. In fact, the Jesuits had not abandoned theU missionary poUcy. Yet the Church did not condemn the entire "way" of Ricci, but certain practices that he claimed were perhaps not superstitious. Closer attention to such subtle argumentation would have greatly improved this study. JohnW.Witek,SJ. Georgetown University The Forgotten Christians ofHangzhou. By D. E. MungeUo. (Honolulu: University of HawaU Press. 1994. Pp. xU, 248. $36.00 cloth.) This book is about the Christian community ofHangzhou, from the early seventeenth to the early eighteenth centuries. The story begins Ui the spring of 161 1 with the arrival ofthreeJesuits in that city ofover one mUlion inhabitants, located at the southern end of the Grand Canal; it ends in the early 1730's with the expulsion of the Jesuit priest Ln residence, the conversion of the mam church into a temple to the Goddess ofthe SaUors.and the persecution and disappearance of the Christian community. The Confucian scholar Zhang XUigyao (1633-1715+), baptized Ui 1678, is the central figure of the work; the Jesuit Fathers Martino Martini (1614-1661) and Prospero Intorcetta (1625-1696) are the two other main characters. The book is based on six writings by Zhang Xingyao, aU but one Ui manuscript form, found in archives and Ubraries in Shanghai, Paris, and Rome. Through careful analysis of these manuscripts, MungeUo chaUenges studies like that of French Sinologist Jacques Gernet, who describes dUferences between 748BOOK REVIEWS Christianity and Chinese culture as unbridgeable. MungeUo shows, on the contrary , that the Christian message had reached a significant degree of inculturation , at least Ln parts of late seventeenth-century China. He argues that western scholars have concentrated on Ricci in Beijing and on eminent convert scholarofficials such as Xu Guangqi; they have paid Uttle attention to regional pockets of Christian activity where literati oflesser fame carried forward the attempts of Ricci and Xu at reconcUing Christianity and Confucianism. Hangzhou was such a place, and Zhang's writings reflect the deeper level of Uiculturation which took place within the Christian community there. The most thorough presentation of this process of "Sinifying Christianity," as MungeUo caUs it, is a piece by Zhang entitled "An Examination of the SimUarities and Dtfferences between the Heavenly Teaching (Christianity) and the Literati Teaching (Confucianism)." This work aimed at convincing Confucian scholars that Christian teachings did not deny but rather fuUUled the truths of the ancient Chinese tradition. To recapture the experience of the Christians in Hangzhou, MungeUo uses two different forms ofwriting. The result is an unusual but effective and engaging presentation of the materials. The core of each chapter is composed of a carefully footnoted discussion of sources and analysis of documents. The second form of writing, based on some historical kernel of fact, involves imaginative , yet highly plausible, reconstructions of the thoughts of the three main...