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F CHAPTER VII The 附關 m…d Christianit~ The second phase of Jesuit activity in China began in 1669, when Yang Kuanghsien was sent into exile and Ferdinand Verbiest gained the directorship of the Imperial Astronomical Bureau. At least temporarily, the Jesuit controversy with the Neo-Confucianists seemed to have been concluded in the Jesuits' favour. In 1692, the K'ang-hsi Emperor officially sanctioned a place for Christianity in the Chinese society. He issued the following edict: Earlier the Board [of Rites] decided that the various Catholic churches should be preserved. However, we allow only Westerners [not Chinese] to practice Christianity. This has been already approved. At the present time the Westerners are managing the administration of our calendar-making .. .in short, they have committed no crime. If we denounce Christianity as a heresy, we cannot forbid Christians to embrace it, since they are innocent . . .1 Quickly his ministers responded and memoralized that they would ‘. ..order that the Catholic churches in all the provinces be preserved as usual . . . allow those who attend the churches to burn incense and to worship as usual . . .'2 The edict had two implications. Contrary to common belief, it seems that K'ang-hsi and his ministers had no particular concern over the ‘religious' inclinations of the Chinese people.3 The edict also meant that the Jesuits had convinced the Manchu throne of their good intentions. Ideally speaking, it should have been the beginning of a warm and cordial relationship between China and the West. To a great extent, the outcome of this Confucian-Christian controversy was determined by the decision of one judge: the K'ang-hsi Emperor himself. More than any other emperor in Chinese history, K'ang-hsi demonstrated a keen and genuine interest in Western learni呵， and even used Westerners as his close advisors.4 Certainly, pa付 of this friendship was based on expedience and K'ang-hsi needed the Jesuits for various technical functions. Because of the contradictions between Western and Chinese sources, historians generally accept the interpretation that 'the Jesuits' technical skills, not their religion or cultural values, were utilized by K'ang-hsi for his own purposes\5 In short, K'ang-hsi's study and application of Western science actually arose from his intention ‘to achieve political goals\6 K'ang-hsi was not genuinely interested in understanding the principles of Western science, let al 109 Confucianism and Christianity reign. This is not surprising considering that even the Emperor's own 'final' valedictory edict was tampered with after his deathJ In his T'ing-hsun ko-yen (K'ang-hsi's Conversations with His Sons),8 collected and published by the Yungcheng Emperor, small-pox innoculations,9 muskets10 and clocks11 were all mentioned without any reference to their Western oringins. The day-by-day chronological history of the K'ang-hsi period, the Veritable Records (Shih-lu) ,12 has no record of the so-called ‘Edict of Religious Toleration' proclaimed in 1692.13 However, an edict with the Emperor's prediction of possible future threats to China from the West was published intact.14 Another significant example of this is the cadestral survey of the empire. The Emperor was given full credit for it and the Jesuits' 的 le was not mentioned.15 A careful reading of scattered documents, and especially K'ang-hsi's own writings, however, gives a different impression of the Emperor's feelings. We know from several edicts written during the height of the Rites Controversy that K'ang-hsi often vigorously tried to mediate between different European religious orders. Because of his insistence on his own interpretation of Christian doctrines, it is difficult to accept the generally held belief that the Rites Controversy was simply a case of the Chinese Son-of-Heaven re-affirming his absolute power when challenged by the Pope.16 As demonstrated by Yang Kuang-hsien's citation of the case of the Philippines, political factors were involved here. But one also must not neglect the intellectual factors leading to the ultimate failure of the Christian effort, especially the dissatisfaction of the K'ang-hsi Emperor. Both K'ang-hsi's edict of 1692 and the decisions he made during the height of the Rites Controversy were conditioned by his understanding of the foreign religion. K'ang-hsi's appreciation of Christianity was not as shallow as most studies suggest. In fact, the Emperor's ultimate decisions regarding the fate of Christianity in China were mainly affected by the debates...

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