Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China, 1500-1800

Fourteen: Whose Antiquarianism? Europe versus China in the 1701 Conflict between Bishop Maigrot and Qiu Sheng

368 the role of antiquarianism in the Chinese rites Controversy The controversy over the Chinese rites, which unfolded over the course of the seventeenth century, was in part a struggle over how to view antiquity . On one side were a group of Chinese literati converts and most Jesuit missionaries, who claimed that the God of antiquity was common to both China and Europe. They believed that the ancient Chinese Shangdi 上帝 (Lord-Above) of the Confucian Classics was the same God as Tianzhu 天主 (Lord of Heaven) of Christianity. The opposing view consisted of European Christians (including most non-Jesuit missionaries), who claimed that China’s antiquity was essentially different from Europe’s antiquity . It was pagan and not reconcilable with the Judeo-Greco-Christian God. The Rites Controversy was a watershed in Sino-Western relations in that the defeat of the accommodationists and the victory of the European exclusionists set back the effort of assimilating Christianity into Chinese culture. The triumph of the European exclusionists was so complete that until quite recently, the Chinese Rites Controversy was seen mainly as a battle between two different groups of Europeans in which the Chinese were mere bystanders who did not participate in any significant way. However, recently a deeper appreciation has emerged of the role Chinese literati played as crucial collaborators with missionaries in producing important religious works in Chinese. Frequently, the conFourteen Whose Antiquarianism? Europe versus China in the 1701 Conflict between Bishop Maigrot and Qiu Sheng D. E. Mungello Whose Antiquarianism? 369 tributions of Chinese were unrecognized and the authorship was attributed solely to Europeans. Growing interest in the Chinese response to Christianity led to the discovery of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century documents that have been lying unread for several centuries in collections in Rome and East Asia.1 Using these documents written by Chinese literati converts, we can see that the Rites Controversy was as much a struggle between Europeans and Chinese as it was a struggle between two groups of Europeans. And the struggle, in its essence, involved a debate over whose view of antiquarianism should prevail. Both Chinese and European civilizations viewed the past in moral terms as a golden age that provided sources of truth, inspiration, and heroes for later times. Both saw the collapse of their classical antiquity during the first half of the first millennium; and the length of time between the fall of antiquity and its revival was strikingly similar in both civilizations. Approximately eight hundred years intervened in China between the decline of Confucian antiquity and its Neo-Confucian revival in the eleventh century, while roughly nine hundred years intervened in Europe between the fall of Rome and the revival of Greek and Roman antiquity in the mid-fourteenth century. Another similarity was that these intervening years saw the emergence of powerful religious forces (Buddhism in China and Christianity in Europe) that would color later perceptions of antiquity in both cultures. The eleventh-century revival of Confucianism included a greater dimension of spirituality than had been present before Buddhism. Renaissance artists expressed the revival of classical antiquity in terms of biblical figures—particularly David, Jesus, and Mary—portrayed in the manner of Greek and Roman gods whose beautiful bodies reflected their transcendent spirituality. While the Renaissance revived the ideals and heroes of classical antiquity , eleventh-century Chinese returned to antiquity as a font of inspiration for reviving the Confucian tradition. Historical criticism was applied with enthusiasm for antiquarian study, led by the historian Sima Guang 司馬光 (1019–86).2 Waves of revival followed that have been distinguished in the West with the names Song Neo-Confucianism, Ming Neo-Confucianism, and Qing Empiricism. Chinese scholars have been more inclined to treat these revivals simply as continuous variations in the True Teaching (Daoxue 道學) or Literati Teaching (Ruxue 儒學). (These terms, “True Teaching” and “Literati Teaching,” are used by the Chinese instead of the Western term “Confucianism.”) However, there were also differences between Europe’s and China’s views of their respective antiquities. 370 Antiquarianism and Intellectual Life in Europe and China Many antiquarian scholars make a fundamental distinction between the different historiographical approaches of Thucydides (ca. 460–ca. 400 BCE) and Herodotus (ca. 484–425 BCE). These ancient Greeks treated history as two distinct genres. Thucydides organized events into a linear line that revealed their causal connections.3 This involved a narrative of events that were more public than private. Herodotus emphasized private rather than...