The Acta Pekinensia or Historical Records of the Maillard de Tournon Legation. Vol. 1: December 1705–August 1705 by Kilian Stumpf, S.J. (review)

The Chinese Rites Controversy is widely regarded as one of the most destructive events in the history of Christianity in China. The dispute over which ancestral and Confucian rites were permissible for Christians featured the Jesuits generally in favor of an accommodating interpretation, whereas most non-Jesuits favored a stricter interpretation and prohibitions. The controversy culminated in the journey of the papal legate Charles Thomas Maillard de Tournon to China in the years 1705–10. The Acta Pekinensia consists of a daily record of Tournon’s stay written by Jesuits. Tournon was highly antagonistic to the Jesuits, whom he blamed for sabotaging his legation.

The Acta Pekinensia represents volume I, covering the first 400 folios (pages) of a 1467-page manuscript. It contains a 161-page introduction, numerous annotations, and an index, making it a useful tool for scholars but also suitable for advanced students writing research papers. The core text consists of a daily account of the stay of Tournon from his arrival in Beijing on December 4, 1705, until his departure on August 28, 1706. It includes Tournon’s two imperial audiences (December 31, 1705, and June 1706) and his reception in the imperial gardens on June 30, 1706. After departing under a cloud of imperial disapproval from Beijing, Tournon spent three months in Nanjing where he issued his retaliatory condemnation of the Chinese rites, before continuing south to Macau where he arrived on June 30, 1707. The Portuguese authorities in Macau placed him under house arrest until his death on August 8, 1710.

The primary complier of the Acta was Kilian Stumpf (Ji Li’an 記理安), a German Jesuit trained in mathematics and chemistry who was born in Würzburg in 1655. In 1695 he arrived in Beijing, where he became the head of the Bureau of Astronomy, and died in 1720. Stumpf was appointed “procurator” to handle negotiations with the papal legate. He also had been appointed papal notary, which gave documents with his signature an official status in dealing with the Roman Curia. Stumpf’s approach was to describe only the events that he personally witnessed and to rely on the accounts of other eyewitnesses to describe other events (p. xx). He cited numerous letters and edicts (some of which are no longer extant) and included Latin translations of many Chinese documents. All Jesuits in Beijing who had witnessed the events signed the compilation that was sent to Rome, where it has been preserved in the Jesuit Archives (ARSI: JS 138).

The Acta is an invaluable source that reveals in detail the interaction between the Imperial Household Department (neiwu fu 內務府) and the foreign legate. Particularly noteworthy are the descriptions of meetings between Tournon and members of the imperial household acting on the Kangxi emperor’s behalf. The most active of these intermediaries was Hascken or Henkama 赫世亨, the only one of these intermediaries to be baptized as a Christian. Although the emperor met with Tournon only twice, these intermediaries had almost daily contact with the legate.

Tournon is portrayed in the Acta as an imperious and Eurocentric negotiator who was prone to tearful scenes. The reader may wonder if illness caused his emotional instability. The Vincentian priest Luigi Antonio Appiani claimed that Tournon was “a man in poor health” and that his illness could be attributed to his being “very sensitive to the wind and cold” (p. 713). Since Tournon was only forty-one years old when he died in 1710 in Macau, the question arises: what caused his early death? Unfortunately, the editors do not address this question, but one hopes they will in the remaining volumes of this monumental contribution to the...