China

CHINA. - The Chinese state (Ta Chung Hwa Min Kuo, that is, "Great Republic of the Flower of the Middle," with reference to the traditional designation "Empire of the Middle," originally applied to the province of Ho-nan, which occupies a central position in China in the narrower sense), comprises, in addition to the 18 provinces that constitute China proper (3.7 million sq km), Manchuria (1.1 million sq km), declared independent since 1932 and returned to China after the defeat of Japan, Inner Mongolia (1.1 million sq km), eastern Tibet (the western part, which has its seat at Lhasa and was once also Chinese, is by now autonomous), Sinkiang, or Chinese Turkestan (1.6 million sq km), as well as the island of Formosa, likewise lost by Japan in the recent conflict. The le-

The ties of dependence of these territories on the central government are rather fluctuating and ill-defined.

I. GEOGRAPHY

China proper, whose coasts face the Pacific, is cut off from the rest of Asia by lofty masses of plateaus and mountains (which accounts for its long and enduring isolation), and it is itself divided into two geographically distinct zones by a series of modest elevations which, under different names (Tsin-ling, Fu-niu-shan), continue from the K'un-lun almost to the delta of the Yang-tse-kiang. Northern China, still traversed by conspicuous reliefs in its western sector, opens to the east into a vast alluvial plain, formed by the yellowish clays (lōs) with which the rivers crossing it are laden and part of which ends up in the sea (hence it is called Hoang-hai, or "Yellow Sea," just as Hoang-ho, or "Yellow River," is the name of the greatest of those rivers, which unwinds its course for 4,100 km and has several times shifted its mouth). The climate is continental, with long and harsh winters (in the Gulf of Pei-chih-li, at the latitude of Sicily, the sea becomes covered with ice) and early and burning summers, with rains that are not abundant but concentrated in the hot season.

Southern China, by contrast, is a far more varied country, with mountains and hills interspersed with basins and traversed by long and deep valleys. The hydrographic network is also organized here into a broad basin, that of the Yang-tse-kiang ("river of the realm of Yang"; not, as is still repeated, "blue river"), one of the largest in the world (nearly 2 million sq km) and one of the most navigable (it is navigable upstream from its mouth to Ichang for about 280 km). The climate, which feels the beneficent influence of the maritime monsoon, is warmer and more humid.

The economy of China is based essentially on agriculture (80-90% of the population), intensive in character and entrusted to small holdings. The products of this activity are extremely varied; but above all dominate rice (although China alone gathers more than 1/3 of the world total, it does not manage to satisfy internal demand), wheat (China occupies third place in the world, after the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A.), tea (first place in world production; but exports are relatively modest, given the heavy consumption), and the mulberry (100 million kg of cocoons annually). Far from negligible are the productions of maize, barley, millet, peanuts, sugar cane (China must, however, import more than half of its requirement), tobacco, cotton, oil seeds, citrus fruits (which have their homeland here), opium, etc.

All other economic activities are unequal to the immense possibilities, not excluding livestock raising (excepting, besides the already mentioned sericulture, pigs in southern China and poultry), while meat consumption, essentially of fish, is guaranteed by fishing and by the spread of fish hatcheries. Mineral resources are conspicuous: fossil fuels, iron, tin and alloy metals abound, whose extraction and processing was begun or favored recently by foreign capital. Large-scale modern industry, too, is only just beginning (cotton mills, silk mills, wool mills, steelworks, etc.); handicrafts are highly developed (work in bronze, tin, ivory, porcelain, hard stones, fabrics, etc.).

One of the most delicate problems of China's economy is that of the means of communication, since most roads are not suited to modern traffic. The canal network is excellent and navigable (the Imperial Canal, built in the 6th century, crosses the lowland for 1,300 km), connected with the Yang-tse and its tributaries as well as with the Si-kiang and the Kan-kiang, but the railways (which, all together, do not equal the Italian network) are still too far from being able to satisfy so vast and populous a territory; aviation is slowly establishing itself (90,000 km of commercial routes). As for maritime trade, it is above all in foreign hands (the United States and Great Britain in the first place); the principal ports are Tientsin in the north, Shanghai in the center and Canton in the south.

In the absence of true censuses, the data relating to the Chinese population, all derived from calculations, must be received with caution. In round figures, it may be held that no fewer than 500 million inhabitants live in the Chinese domain and no fewer than 400 in China proper. The average density of the domain is about half that of China proper; but even this latter figure results from rather widely divergent extremes. In the lower basin of the Yang-tse, over an area equal to that of Italy, the density approaches 350 inhabitants per sq km; in northern China the lowland counts at least 250, and so does the so-called Red Basin of Sze-chwan. By contrast, in the plateaus of the south it drops to 60 inhabitants per sq km and still lower in the peripheral mountain regions. The rural population probably represents 4/5 of the total; the urban population is distributed among more than a hundred large cities (that is, with over 100,000 inhabitants each, but 7 of these — Shanghai, Peking, Tientsin, Chungking, Mukden, Canton and Hong Kong — exceed a million), and in at least 500 other centers with a population between 100,000 and 25,000 inhabitants.

The Chinese State, which preserved a monarchical form until 1912, has maintained, after the proclamation of the Republic, a condition of permanent instability, both because of the play of external pressures and because of the prevalence of particularistic and separatist tendencies at home. Recent events open a new chapter, but the transformation they foreshadow presupposes, as always in China, a necessarily long travail.

Giuseppe Caraci

II. RELIGIONS OF CHINA

If St. Paul, instead of taking the road to the west, had chosen that to the east, one could be certain that of the Chinese, more than of the Greeks, he would have said that they were in every respect pious, God-fearing, religious, devout, even to excess κατά πάντα ὡς δεισιδαιμονοτέρους (Act. 17:22). From the most distant origins of this people, around the middle of the 3rd millennium B.C., in fact, the religious sentiment toward the Supreme Being and the filial and devout piety toward the deceased ancestors are its most pronounced characteristic. This note of clear religiosity is found, in greater or lesser degree, in the Chinese of every century, down to our own, when, under the influence of Western atheism, young intellectuals, especially those educated abroad, wished, like some of their Western teachers, to rid themselves of every religious idea. Hence it may be said that of all ancient and modern peoples, not enlightened by the light of Revelation, whether primitive or Christian, it would be difficult and perhaps impossible to find one more religious than the Chinese people.

In the history of this people four religious currents, independent of Christianity, can be distinguished. During a millennium, and perhaps even more, of documented history, that is, from the 14th-13th centuries down to about the 3rd century B.C., the Chinese people, and not only the class of the learned, certainly knew the true God, under the names first of Ruler, then also of Heaven, with or without adjectives such as supreme, august, immense, etc., and rendered Him the worship that was due to Him. If we wish to adhere to the oldest and most authentic texts, it is impossible for us, sinologically speaking, to deny that this people had a sufficiently complete and pure concept of God, at least during the first millennium of its history.

Up to this point we are on certain ground, whereas the period that follows is less firm. It is probable, however, that even during more than two other millennia, that is, down to the 19th century, China, even amid errors and accretions, retained, at least among some of the learned, in sufficient measure, the concept of the true God.

With the advent of Confucius in the 6th century B.C., this ancient tradition is preserved in his school, not in its primitive purity, but still, as has been said, in a sufficiently recognizable measure, at least until the arrival of the philosopher Chu Hsi (1130-1200), coriphaeus of the Chinese rationalists, and of those of his school,

the school of the Sung, from the name of the dynasty then reigning (960-1279). The Confucian school goes under the name of Confucianism (v.).

Taoism and Buddhism must also be mentioned.

Taoism, or tao chiao (where the European reader must note that the a in the diphthong ao is almost mute), a name that came into use during the 2nd century B.C., is, etymologically, the religion of the tao. The tao, moreover, is the vaguest thing there can be, and can mean, according to context, way, perfect mode of governing or of obeying, principle, absolute, mode of conceiving, method, manner of being or of doing, etc. etc. Western authors in their translations speak of Logos, God, reason, nature, way, providence, etc. For the Chinese, the founder of Taoism (v.) is Lao Tzu, a figure of the 6th-5th century B.C. around whom the most improbable legends have accumulated. The reason for this attribution is to be sought in the fact that he would have been the compiler of the first Taoist writing, the Taoteching or Book of the Principle and of its Activity, which some recent author has wished to date from the beginning or the middle of the 4th century B.C., but which, being cited by authors of the 5th-4th century, must also be of a somewhat earlier period. It is this book that served as the basis for the further development of the whole system. It seems, on the other hand, that Lao Tzu found the doctrine, already sufficiently formulated, in the archives of the Chou dynasty, which began in 1050 B.C., according to this phrase from the Han literary index: "The Taoists came from the archivists," that is, from the annalists and astrologers of the Chou. The texts speak of it as of a non-Chinese doctrine, then current in India, suddenly spread in China. It could therefore only have been a Chinese adaptation of the Indian system of the upanishads, that is, "texts of arcane doctrine," which contained considerations on the Supreme Being, the self and the world, the oldest of which go back to the period 800-500 B.C. Before Lao Tzu there were pre-Taoists who taught Taoism, but they left no writings; some names of these pre-Taoists are known.

Lao Tzu seems to have accepted, like Confucius, the ancient religion with its sacrifices, its cult of ancestors and its systems of divination. What is certain is that he neither condemned nor recommended these things. He contented himself with drawing attention to the tao, hoping that in this way man would conform to it, and would thus attain the perfection of his moral life.

The concise and obscure texts of Laoze, one or two centuries later, were developed in magnificent language by Lièze [Lieh Tzu] and by Cioamze [Chuang Tzu], who are considered the major exponents of Taoism and the deepest thinkers of C. The ideas of Cioamze are generally lofty, and the beauty of his style means that he is read with pleasure by Chinese of all times. For him life is an illusion, a continuous transforming and succession of new forms. The anecdote of the butterfly is famous. "Once," he says, "I, Cioamze, dreamed that I was a butterfly fluttering about content, and I did not know that I was Cioamze. Then I awoke and found myself to be Cioamze. But I no longer knew whether I was Cioamze who dreamed of being a butterfly, or whether I was a butterfly who dreamed of being Cioamze."

Very early a certain antagonism arose between the followers of Confucius and those of Laoze, whence a struggle between the two schools, until the year 213 B.C., when the Confucian books were burned and Confucianism entered a period of eclipse, while Taoism triumphed for a time. The emperor Scheoamti [Shih Huang-ti], who brought about the unity of C. in the 3rd century B.C., and his ministers were Taoists, as is proved by the search for the drug of immortality, so much in vogue in those times. Even around the Christian era the emperors favored Taoism. Once the classical books were recovered in the 2nd century A.D., Taoism began to decline. Under the influence of Ciam-taolim [Chang Tao-ling] (b. in 34 A.D. and d. around 165), Taoism devoted itself to alchemy, to magic, to the search for the drug of immortality, to incantations and to talismans, all things that allowed the "priests" of the tao, or taosce, to live over the course of the centuries at the expense of the ignorant and credulous people. The ruin of Taoism was complete with the arrival in C. of Buddhism, from which the former continually borrowed many elements.

Temples and monasteries then began to be built, in which the taosce, until the 10th century, could even take a wife. People then spoke of Heaven and Earth. A pantheon almost as complete as that of Buddhism was introduced into the cult. From then on, now one, now the other religion was in favor at court, now both were persecuted. This seesaw game lasted until the 12th century, when Ciusci cast discredit upon both religions and succeeded in doing so. From then on, Taoism and Buddhism have sought to live side by side, taking and lending ideas and methods of action at the expense of the people.

The popular Taoism of today is a mixture of coarse superstitions, which cannot be separated from the cult of innumerable idols, from the study of alchemy and from the practice of astrology. In its popular form, it has divinities for all the forces of nature and for everything that in one way or another can be an object of man's knowledge. There are deities for all illnesses, from diabolical obsession to toothache, for all the organs of the human body, for birth and death, for wealth and happiness, for old age, for commerce, for war, for mountains, rivers, lakes, for heaven, for hell, for the sun, the moon, the stars, for the roads, for thunder — in short, for everything. Many of these gods can be seen in Taoist temples. Besides the custody of these temples, the taosce have the office of casting spells and exorcising demons, driving them out of houses or streets that are supposed to be infested by them. They are also often invited to funerals or to processions to obtain rain or clear weather. These functions cannot take place without frenzied shouts and a great discord of instrumental music. All the taosce and even the local divinities depend on the "Celestial Master," a title conferred in 748 on Ciamtaolim and his descendants, in whom some Westerners, quite devoid of religious knowledge, have with blasphemous language wished to see the "pope" of the Taoists. It is admitted that incantations directed to the "Celestial Master" have an extraordinary efficacy. Taoist doctrines are contained in a very voluminous collection, called the "Taoist canon," which comprises 1504 works in 1120 small volumes. The influence of Taoism on the Chinese nation seems today rather weak, only the common people being more or less imbued with these doctrines.

Buddhism, or fu chiao, is the religion of Fu, a word anciently pronounced Bud, hence Buddha. According to a constant Chinese tradition, the emperor Mim [Ming] of the Later Han (58-75 A.D.) is said to have seen in a dream "a man of gold," a statue 16 feet tall and surrounded by a nimbus. The scholar Fui [Fu Yi] is said to have explained to him, upon waking, that this person was the Buddha. As a result of this dream, the emperor is said to have sent to seek out Buddhist preachers, two of whom, Kāśyapa Matanga and Dharmarksa or Gobharana, are said to have brought and translated the Sutra of the 42 Paragraphs and other Buddhist books and to have arrived at Loyang in Honan in the years 65, 67 or 68 A.D. This legend was accepted by all, and therefore also by the Catholic missionaries of the years around 1600, who furthermore supposed that the emperor had sent ambassadors to India to bring back the religion that the apostle St. Thomas was then preaching there, whereas they would have brought back only Buddhism. But in 1910 Prof. Enrico Maspero demonstrated that the dream and the traditions connected with it are a pious fraud imagined at the end of the 2nd century A.D. (H. Maspero, Le songe et l'ambassade de l'empereur Ming. Etude critique des sources, in Bulletin de l'Ecole française d'Extrême Orient, Hanoi 1910, pp. 95-130). There is good evidence that already in the 1st century B.C., or even earlier, there were Buddhist infiltrations in the lower basin of the Blue River. Perhaps the legend arose with the fact of the official recognition of Buddhism around 65-68 A.D.

The new religion, although patronized by the emperor, did not at first make rapid progress. Almost all the preachers of this doctrine were, in the first centuries, foreigners to C. They courageously set about translating and adapting the books into Chinese, in which work they were greatly helped by a prince of Parthia, a certain Parthamasiris, who arrived in C. in 148 A.D. and was known to the Chinese under the name of Nganseccao [An Shih-kao]. In the 4th-5th centuries an era of great prosperity began for Buddhism. Around 335 in the capital alone there were 42 monasteries, and in 381 it is said that nine tenths of the inhabitants of northwestern C. were Buddhists. At the end of the 4th century the series of emperors who themselves embraced this religion also begins. Then begin the pilgrimages to India undertaken by the most pious Chinese Buddhists, who bring back legends, manuscripts and various information. The most famous of these pilgrims is Fascien [Fa Hsie], who set out in 399 and returned in 414. Buddhism in C. had, through the centuries, periods of rise and fall, also not infrequently encountering rather strong persecutions, or on the other hand seeing more than once among its bonzes even some emperor who had abdicated to lead a more recollected life in some monastery. The apogee was reached in the 10th and 12th centuries, when this religion not only became popular but had a great literary influence.

Today Buddhism in C., with its polytheism, its incantations and its superstitions, excites very little enthusiasm. The pagodas are often abandoned, dirty and neglected. The bonzes are held in very little esteem, being almost always ignorant and often immoral and opium smokers. The bonzesses too have a very low place in the esteem of the people. In 1840 all the houses of bonzesses in the city of Soochow in Kiangsu and of Foochow in Fukien were suppressed for immorality.

Of the ten schools of Buddhism, that of dhyāna or contemplation, little known in India and brought to China in the 6th century by Bodhidharma, seems to have almost absorbed all the others. It aims to intensify the interior life through calm, meditation and prayer. In the past several Chinese thinkers belonged to it, who did not care for the cult of images as practiced by the common people.

One of the branches of this school is Amidism, where good souls are not rare who with pagan lips pray fervently and with almost Christian formulas: it is within this sect that one may hope that the true God has prepared souls of good will to be guided by His Grace. There one finds a Savior, who however is not a Redeemer, and the idea of salvation in a "pure land"; there one finds an intense life of prayer, long, humble, ardent, sincere, and, especially, most beautiful acts of contrition and of love. Every good Amidist must each morning early, as soon as he rises, turn toward the West, worship with joined hands, recollect himself and invoke Amida. Furthermore he must make an act of contrition, turn from evil to good and express the desire to be reborn in the pure land. He must do all this with reverence, thinking that Amida is present. Although assured of his salvation through the invocation of Amida, the Amidist must be humble and pure, since salvation is truly assured only by the invocations made at the point of death. Then one must make ten invocations from the bottom of the heart. Only thus will Amida manifest himself, appear, console the soul and receive it into his pure land. If Jesus is put in place of Amida, the prayer of the Amidist is often perfectly orthodox; here and there there may still be some error to correct, but the whole is a sincere prayer that cannot leave the heart of the true God unmoved.

Let one judge from this prayer of a believer: "Behold, in invoking Amida and commending myself to him, I place my trust in his name. Knowing that he, because of his vow, has compassion on all those who suffer, I formulate in his presence my repentance and my desire. I now confess with repentance all my ignorances and all my rebellions, all the sins committed in deeds, in words and in thoughts. And I desire that at the last hour of my life all the obstacles that could oppose my rebirth in the happy land and my vision of Amida face to face be destroyed." And here is a hymn moving in its brevity: "Hail, Amida, savior of the world, great father of mercies! With all my heart and with all sincerity I ask you to make me be reborn in the pure land. By virtue of your vow and because of your great mercy, deign to free me from all bonds. Deign to be mirrored in the heart that I open to you, as the moon is mirrored in clear water."

Rarely does a non-Christian Chinese, if he has religious feelings, content himself with only one of these three religions; not infrequently he is Confucianist and Taoist, Confucianist and Buddhist and perhaps also Confucianist, Buddhist and Taoist, according to the formula dear to every good Chinese, "the three religions make but one."

Now we shall say briefly of the other religions represented in China (for Christianity, v. further on). Maritime commerce sufficiently explains the presence of Mohammedans from the middle of the 18th century in several cities of the coast. The history of the penetration of Islam into China is, however, linked to the military movements and deportations of the Mongol era. Only in the second half of the 12th century is Islam seen established in numerous ports of China. Several Muslims occupied important posts at the Chinese court or as scientists. From the 13th century to the 17th century Mohammedan astronomers come from Arabia concerned themselves with the Chinese calendar. Their astronomy was not replaced by European astronomy, represented by the famous Jesuit John Adam Schall von Bell, who in 1634.

The first certain mention of Manichaeism in China, arrived from Persia, is from 694. For a long time the Manichaeans practically bound their fate to that of the Uighurs, whose princes were favorable to Manichaeism. With the decline of the power of their protectors they too hastened toward their end. Until the 12th century they are encountered in small number in Chekiang and Fukien under the name of Mim chiao, a name that was prohibited by the first emperor of the Mim or Ming dynasty and then passed to the Jews of Kaifeng.

No Chinese document attests the arrival of the Jews in China before 1000 A.D. Since they did not eat the sinews of animals in memory of Jacob (Gen. 32, 24-32), the Chinese called their religion "the religion of those who remove the sinews." According to a Chinese stele erected by the Jews in 1489, from as early as 1163 the city of Kaifeng in Honan would have had a synagogue. Another synagogue would have been erected in Hangchow in Chekiang. Several Jewish families lived in Kaifeng at the beginning of the 17th century. Matteo Ricci (v.) learned of them in the last days of June 1605 when one of these Jews, believing he would find in Ricci a coreligionist, went to visit him in Peking. In 1607 Ricci sent a Chinese temporal coadjutor, Antonio Leitão, to Kaifeng to obtain more information. These Jews, however, would not be found again until Oct. 1704 by the Jesuit Giovan Paolo Gozani, who informs us that they had preserved the Pentateuch in 13 scrolls, without the Masoretic points, and a great number of other books of the Old Testament.

III. EVANGELIZATION OF CHINA

1. Before the 13th century

Leaving aside the legend, by now critically inadmissible, of the preaching of St. Thomas the Apostle in China, it is historically established that in 635 Christianity, in the form of the Nestorian heresy, made its first appearance in the capital of the Middle Kingdom, which was then called Changan, today Sian, in Shensi. This is attested to us by the very famous stele of this city, carved on 4 February 781 and discovered in the first months of 1625, still in existence today.

The upper part bears a magnificent cross with this title beneath it: "Stone of the propagation in China of the luminous religion, come from the Great Zzin," that is, from the Mediterranean East, perhaps Persia. The stele, carved in Chinese and in ancient Syriac (Estrangelo), contains an expository part on religious doctrine, a historical part narrating the vicissitudes of Nestorianism in China from 635 to 781, and some seventy titles and names of Western missionaries in Estrangelo.

The doctrinal part treats the following subjects: God one and triune, immutable, eternal, creator, pure spirit; the creation of the world and of man in the state of innocence; original sin; the Incarnation of the Lord from a Virgin, made manifest by means of a star; Jesus, called Messiah, who fulfills the prophecies, founds the Church, preaches the eight Beatitudes, dies upon a cross (?), ascends to Heaven with the just and leaves the New Testament; Baptism, the sign of the Cross, prayer with the face turned toward the east; finally the priests who wear a beard and tonsure, profess poverty, recite the office for the living and the dead, and celebrate Mass once a week.

Received with great demonstrations of respect by the court, the missionaries soon spread the "good news" as far as the most remote regions, raising up churches and monasteries. They seem to have been almost exclusively foreigners and monks or nuns; very few testimonies allude to Chinese Nestorians or suggest their existence. Toward the middle of the 9th century these Nestorians seem to have almost reached a thousand.

As soon as they arrived, with the evident help of the natives — even though pagan, Buddhist and especially Taoist — they set about translating or adapting into Chinese some of the 530 Christian books they had brought with them. Several of these works, translated in the years 635-700, were not rediscovered until 1908. Thus we have a Life of Jesus Messiah, a Treatise on Monotheism, the Gloria in excelsis Deo according to the form in use in eastern Syria, and a kind of Litany of the Saints (P. M. D'Elia, Nel XIII centenario dell'arrivo dei nestoriani in C., in Civ. Catt., 1936, I, pp. 203 ff.; 304 ff.).

The decree of 845, which destroyed Buddhism, also destroyed Nestorianism. In 980 it was announced that the Christians of China had perished in one way or another and that the churches had been destroyed. Thus around the year 1000 this branch of Nestorianism originating from Persia died out. But in the 11th-13th centuries one witnesses a reflowering of the same, originating this time from the Churches of upper Asia.

Strong nuclei of Nestorians are encountered in the northern provinces of China, among non-Chinese tribes, such as the Uighurs, a Turkish tribe of inner Mongolia, the Öngpüt or White Tatars, another Turkish tribe, the Naiman of the Altai Mountains, and especially the Kereit, of whom as many as 200,000 would have been converted together with their chief in 1007. Several Christian princesses of this branch later became the wives of Mongol Khans. From the north these Nestorians subsequently descended toward the south. Marco Polo found some in the north, in the center and in the south in the years 1275-92. In recent years several relics of these Christian communities have been rediscovered, such as medals, crosses and in particular Christian tombs and sarcophagi, often with a brief inscription in Syriac and one or more carved crosses. In the 7th-13th centuries one also encounters several foreign phoneticizations, which are nothing but Christian names, such as Luke, Paul, John, James, Sergius, Charles, Zosimus, George, etc. In 1933 the last descendants of these ancient Christians were even rediscovered in the tribe of the Erküt, which inhabits the southeastern corner of the Ordos; even today their rites make it possible to trace Baptism, Confession, Matrimony and Extreme Unction.

2. The first contacts and the first mission (13th-14th centuries)

In 1206 the immense Mongol Empire begins to arise, which at a certain moment extends from Mongolia and China to Dalmatia and the Adriatic. Innocent IV conceived the idea of entering into contact with the Mongols in order to convert them or at least to have them as allies of the crusaders against the Muslims, whom they were to take from behind. For this reason in 1245 he sent as pontifical legate to the Mongol court one of the first companions of St. Francis of Assisi, Giovanni da Pian di Carpine, near Perugia, who was the first traveler to go to the Far East by land; his mission having failed, two years later he returned to Europe and wrote his Historia Mongolorum. Nor did the mission of the French Dominican Andrew of Longjumeau, sent in 1249 by St. Louis king of France to the Mongol emperor who was said to have converted to Christianity, have any better outcome; two years later he too returned to Europe. The mission of the Flemish Minorite William of Rubruck, who set out in 1253 and returned in 1255, also had very modest results. None of these three had remained in China.

The honor of having begun the first Catholic mission in the Middle Kingdom belongs to the Italian Minorite Giovanni da Montecorvino, who was the first to arrive in China by sea. Having probably disembarked at Zaiton, that is Chüanchow in Fukien, where Arab merchants flocked, he must have arrived at Khänbalik, "the city of the king," our Peking, in the first months of 1294, shortly after the death of Kubilai. In the same year as his arrival he led back to the Catholic Church from Nestorianism the prince George of Tendu and with him a good number of his subjects, and the following year he baptized a son of his. A large and beautiful church was raised by the prince in honor of the Most Holy Trinity, probably in the province of Suiyüan. When the prince died in 1298, however, his brothers, fanatical Nestorians, led the people back to their former errors.

In the first eleven or twelve years, Giovanni administered more than six thousand baptisms, and between 1298 and 1318 he raised three churches in Khänbalik. Some forty boys from seven to eleven years of age were being trained in the study of Latin, chant and the liturgy. For them Giovanni translated the New Testament into Uighur, and copied the psalter, the Breviary and the liturgical hymns.

When Clement V, then at Poitiers, learned this good news, in 1307, he had six Minorites consecrated bishops, so that they in turn might go to consecrate Giovanni, first archbishop of Khänbalik and patriarch of the Far East. The elect were four Italians, one German and one Provençal, the latter then replaced by a fifth Italian. Having set out in the autumn of 1307, three of them died in India during the journey, while the other three continued on to Khänbalik, where, probably in 1313, they consecrated Archbishop John. The latter hastened to found the episcopal see of Zaiton, where the three bishops who had consecrated him were subsequently titulars. Other friars were sent to Hangchow in Chekiang and to Yangchow in present-day Kiangsu. Unfortunately, notwithstanding what is usually said to the contrary, these bishops never had true successors in their sees. Between 1325 and 1328, Bl. Odoric of Pordenone is seen in Khänbalik; he returned to Italy to enlist about fifty new Franciscan missionaries; death, however, overtook him at Udine on 14 January 1331. The fifty Franciscans nevertheless set out with the new legate, Friar John de' Marignolli, who arrived at Khänbalik in the first half of August 1342 and remained there only three or four years. Having returned to Avignon in 1352, he warmly recommended the mission to Innocent VI, who would gladly have wished to send other bishops to China. But by then zeal for the missions began to wane, and there were no further dispatches of missionaries. Then came the great revolution of 1368, which replaced the Mongol dynasty with the Chinese one of the Mim and Ming, and then the whole work of the heroic Franciscans perished.

Several indications have led a certain number of modern sinologists to think that the indigenous element was very scanty, not to say nonexistent, both among the Nestorians and among the first Catholics of China. In the 7th-9th centuries there had been about a thousand Nestorian monks and nuns, but among them there were very few Chinese. In the 14th century there had been, at most, about 30,000 Catholics, but they were for the most part non-Chinese. The history of Christians in early and medieval China is not the history of Christian China, but the history of foreign Christians living in China; and these foreign Christians disappeared with the storm of 1368. For two long centuries, 1368-1551, the history of the Catholic Church has practically nothing to record in China. The Middle Kingdom closes itself ever more within itself and isolates itself almost completely from the rest of the world. China and the world then become, in the language of Confucius: "All that is found under the vault of heaven," the frontiers of the one sufficiently coinciding with the frontiers of the other.

3. Foundation of the modern missions (1583-1635)

The young Society of Jesus soon gave China a prime mover of the first rank, Francis Xavier, an exceptional strategist and leader, Alessandro Valignano, a patient precursor, Michele Ruggieri, and an intelligent and devout executor, Matteo Ricci, who would firmly plant the Church in that immense country.

Francis Xavier, in contact with the Japanese in the years 1549-51, saw it as necessary to convert Japan through China. In August 1552, behold him on the island of Sancian, about ten kilometers from the mainland and a little more than a hundred from the city of Canton, awaiting a favorable opportunity to disembark on the other shore; but on the night of 3 December 1552 death overtook him, and he prophesied that his confreres would arrive there where he had not been able to arrive. This last will of the Saint was taken up by Alessandro Valignano (v.), who on 6 September 1578 landed for the first time in Macao, where the Jesuits had had a residence with an adjoining church since 1565, and decided to bring from India some young Italian father to apply himself exclusively to the study of the Chinese language and customs.

The chosen one was the Apulian Michele Ruggieri (v.). It has been said of him that he is the precursor of Matteo Ricci, and the thing is exact provided one does not believe that he is the only or the first precursor. He, on the contrary, is but the last of an already long series, but the most fortunate. In fact, in the space of 30 years, from Xavier (1552) to Ricci (1583), fully 25 Jesuits, 22 Franciscans, 2 Augustinians and 1 Dominican, and some of them more than once, with perseverance and indomitable courage, knocked, but in vain, at the impenetrable doors of China. Ruggieri arrived at Macao around 20 July 1579 and immediately set himself to the study of Chinese, without books and with teachers whom he did not understand. While he continued this arid study, the Portuguese of Macao, at first once, then twice a year, went to Canton for a fair that lasted several weeks. Taking advantage of the occasion, Ruggieri, between March 1580 and April 1582, went there fully four times. Meanwhile he desired to have a study companion, and to this end he insistently asked Valignano to send him a young fellow pupil from Macerata who was then in India.

In consequence of this, on 7 August 1582 Matteo Ricci (v.) landed at Macao and undertook the study of Chinese. After eleven months of intense study, both of them, on 10 September 1583, the true date of the birth of the modern missions, went to the city of Sciaochin or Shihing, seat of the viceroy of the province of Kwangtung, and settled there. In November 1588, Ruggieri was sent by Valignano to Rome to prepare a pontifical embassy to the emperor of China. When this too failed, he retired to Salerno, where he ended his days on 11 May 1607. Matteo Ricci, on the other hand, between 1583 and 1601 founded five residences from south to north, as far as Nanking and Peking, where he entered triumphantly in 1601 and where he remained until his death (11 May 1610). In the interior of China in 1583 he found no Catholic, not even some distant descendant of those baptized by the Franciscans of the 14th century; at his death he left about 2,500 under the care of 16 missionaries, half of them Chinese. Already on 12 November 1603, Valignano wrote: "This mission of China has reached such a point that it seems more a miraculous thing than a human one.

Not even a hundred years from now could we have hoped that our men could arrive at enjoying such esteem in China" (P. D'Elia, Fonti Riccione, II, Rome 1949, p. 264, note 4).

Very soon the Jesuits concerned themselves with the indigenous element. The first two Chinese to become religious began their novitiate with the Jesuits on 1 January 1519, when in the interior of China there were only about 80 Christians. To them, who were Macaists, there would be added, while Ricci was still alive, six others equally Macaists and one Sino-Japanese. Two of them had studied philosophy, all except one Latin, and one had received the tonsure, which proves that they were heading toward the priesthood, which however they did not reach, because the general of the Order, for reasons of prudence, forbade them access to the altar.

In their almost impatient desire to have soon a numerous indigenous clergy, the Jesuits, not supported, as we are, by the experience of almost four centuries, foreseeing and even exaggerating the difficulties that the Chinese would have in learning Latin, and desiring on the other hand that many literati already intellectually formed could be ordained priests without too many complementary studies, asked and in 1615 obtained from the Holy See the ability to substitute literary Chinese for Latin in the celebration of Mass, in the recitation of the Breviary and in the administration of the Sacraments. In reality this privilege was never put into execution, because Rome became uneasy before a project of such scope and practically drew back, notwithstanding the repeated insistences of the Jesuits which continued throughout the whole 17th century.

What contributed most to the success of the Jesuit missionaries in China was the correction of the calendar. For the Chinese this was a political instrument of high value; the tributary kingdoms that accepted it obtained China's protection, while those that rejected it were considered rebels. The scientific rules on which it was based had already been lost for many years, so that it was drawn up only empirically and therefore was not free from serious errors.

One of the reasons why Ricci was able to go to Peking was precisely the hope that he would be capable of making this much-desired correction. Aware, however, of his scientific unpreparedness, as early as 1595, and then again in 1605 and 1608, he asked his superiors in Rome for a genuine astronomer. Meanwhile, in 1609, Galileo built the telescope with which began the series of his sensational discoveries, which he published in March 1610. Among the closest friends of the Pisan astronomer was a German scientist, Johann Schreck, Latinized as Terrentius, who, having become a Jesuit and gone to China, would always remain an admirer of the supreme Tuscan astronomer. A young Piedmontese scientist who had gone as a missionary to India, Fr. Antonio Rubino, informed of the discoveries, in turn notified the missionaries of China. Already in 1615, which for those times represents a singular rapidity, Fr. Emanuel Dias the younger, in a short work on Questions of Astronomy, made known to the Chinese, on the last page of the work, the telescope and the discoveries made with it.

Following new and ever more insistent requests for genuine astronomers sent from Peking to Rome, on 16 April 1618 there embarked at Lisbon for China, among others, the Milanese Giacomo Rho, the Bohemian Wenceslas Pantaleon Kirwitzer, a convinced Copernican, the Austrian Johann Alberich, and two Germans, Johann Schreck, already mentioned, and Johann Adam Schall von Bell (v.). On this occasion the first telescope seems to have arrived in China. Schreck, preoccupied with the planned reform of the calendar, with ever more pressing insistence, made warm appeals to Galileo, from whom he solicited scientific help that he deemed decisive for the longed-for reform. From 1616 to 1623 these requests multiplied. After a clearly negative reply from Galileo, Schreck then turned to Kepler, who in December 1627 replied in detail to all the questions and sent his works.

The missionaries were not officially charged with the correction of the calendar until 1629, on which Rho and Schall worked especially, and who, assisted by a dozen good men of letters, within the space of nearly five years published a collection of about 150 small volumes of Mathematical Books. On 28 February 1634 the first calendar according to Western methods was presented to the emperor. Schall's work was then continued by Ferdinand Verbiest (v.) and by other distinguished scientists. From then on the president of the astronomical bureau would always be a Jesuit, and, after 1773, a missionary, even in times of persecution down to about the middle of the 19th century.

4. Progress outside and inside the court (1635-1700)

Thanks to the imperial favor enjoyed by the Jesuit astronomers, the Church made marvelous progress. The 2,500 Catholics of 1610 had already become 5,000 in 1615, then 13,000 in 1627 and 38,200 in 1636. Fr. Prospero Intorcetta thinks that from 1583 to 1650 150,000 baptisms were administered. Shortly after the middle of the 17th century the annual increase of Christians was 10,000 souls. Between 1651 and 1664, fully 105,000 baptisms were administered by all the missionaries then working in China. In 1664 some thirty Jesuit missionaries had succeeded in opening 42 mission stations, 159 churches and a great number of private chapels. Toward 1670 the total number of Catholics had reached 274,000 and in 1700 it would reach 300,000.

But more than the number, the quality of these Catholics must be considered. Several of them belonged to the high society of 17th-century China. Already in Ricci's time, who had intuited the exact method, one meets truly eminent men: Paul Siücoamcchi [Hsü Kuang-ch'i] (1562-1633), the most illustrious man that the Church of China has ever had, baptized around 15 January 1603, who introduced Christianity into his native Shanghai in 1608; raised to the highest positions of social and political life, to the point of becoming chancellor of the Empire, he was, in Ricci's words, the "greatest pillar" of the Church of China; Ignatius Cchiütaesu [Ch'ü T'aisu] (1549-1611), son of the greatest man of letters of that time, baptized on 25 March 1605, who, having become an enthusiastic admirer of Ricci's science and virtue, set about proclaiming it everywhere and thus smoothing his path wherever he went; Leo Licezeo [Li Chih-tsao] (1565-1630) of Hangchow in Chekiang, who made rapid progress in the study of the Western sciences which he spread in China, baptized by Ricci in March 1610, a few weeks before his own death; Michael Iamttimiüm [Yang T'ing-yü] (1557-1627), likewise of Hangchow, baptized in 1611. In 1636 there were among the Catholics 14 higher officials, 10 doctors, and more than 300 licentiates. Many others, among the greatest men of letters and the most influential members of the government, though not reaching Baptism, sympathized with the missionaries and admired the purity and loftiness of Christian doctrine. It is certain that Ricci and some of his collaborators and successors had an enormous and truly exceptional influence on the highest society of 17th-century China: men of letters, magistrates, prefects, governors of provinces, viceroys, ministers of the two capitals, princes and personages who were close to the emperor.

The Jesuits penetrated indirectly into the court as well. In 1626 they baptized Achille Ppamttienescu [P'ang T'ien-shou], who would later become chancellor of the Empire and generalissimo of all the naval and military forces of the last pretender to the throne of the Mings. Through him Christianity reached the court. In 1636, 140 princes of the imperial house, 40 members of the court, and from 70 to 80 palace ladies had received Baptism. Later, in 1647, both the natural mother and the legal mother of the pretender to the throne, Iomli [Yung Li], received Baptism under the respective names of Mary and Helen, and with them also the empress Anna, and the crown prince, to whom it was wished to give the symbolic name of Constantine. In 1650 Achilleus and Helen sent to Rome the Polish Jesuit Michael Boym, the bearer of letters to the Pope and to the general of the Order, in which requests were made for other missionaries of the Society. Alexander VII did not reply until the end of 1655, when Helen had already been dead for four years, and the replies of the general Alessandro Gottifredi never reached their destination, since Boym, who was carrying them, died in 1659 before reaching the halfway point of his journey.

Meanwhile the work of European astronomy continued, under the care of Adam Schall and Ferdinand Verbiest. Even amid their scientific labors, both did not lose sight of the apostolate. Schall would undoubtedly have brought to the light of the Gospel the emperors Ciomcem [Chung Cheng] and Seicence [Shun Chih], respectively the last sovereign of the Mings and the first of the Zzim [Ts'ing], had the premature death of both not prevented him. Schall was succeeded in 1666 by Verbiest, who had relations of intimate friendship with the emperor Camsci [K'ang Hsi], perhaps the greatest of China's emperors. For five months he taught the monarch the Western sciences and with them the Christian doctrine, which the emperor was disposed to embrace.

Indeed, K'ang Hsi, satisfied with the Treaty of Nerchinsk, negotiated by the Jesuits Francesco Gerbillon and Thomas Pereira, by which on Sept. 6, 1689 peace was re-established between the tsar and the "Son of Heaven," issued on March 22, 1692 the first decree of religious freedom: from then on all his subjects could follow the Christian religion and all missionaries could preach it throughout his vast domains. This decree crowned the efforts of a century of Christian penetration.

5. Internal and external difficulties (1632-1840)

Gregory XIII, at the request of the Portuguese government, in 1585 granted the Jesuits the exclusive privilege of evangelizing China and Japan. This explains why during the years 1583-1631 there were no missionaries in China other than the Jesuits. In 1600 Clement VIII revoked this privilege, though still obliging missionaries departing for Portuguese Asia to set sail from Lisbon. In 1608, Paul V removed even this restriction for the mendicant Orders, and in 1633 Urban VIII removed it for all religious without distinction. Finally in 1673 Clement X extended this concession to the secular clergy as well.

It thus happened that on Jan. 2, 1632 two Italian Dominicans arrived in Fukien, Angelo Cocchi of Fiesole and Tommaso Serra of St. Mary Magdalene. After the second was killed by corsairs, Cocchi asked for and obtained another companion, Giovanni Battista Morales, who arrived in Fukien on July 2, 1633 in the company of the Franciscan Antonio Caballero of St. Mary. After Cocchi died in Nov. 1633, the following year brought another Dominican, Father Francesco Diez, and another Franciscan, Father Francesco Alameden de la Madre de Dios.

With the arrival of the new missionaries, already in 1634 the all-too-famous question of the Chinese rites (v.) broke out in public, a question that was to drag on until 1742 and find its final solution only in 1939. The missionaries split into two opposing camps: the Jesuits on one side and the Franciscans and Dominicans on the other. K'ang Hsi felt wounded when he saw that an authority different from his own and foreign to his nation was meddling in the affairs of China against his own will.

The difficulty showed no sign of diminishing with the arrival in the Far East of the first apostolic vicars. François Pallu, Pierre Marie de la Motte Lambert and then Ignazio Cottolendi, founders of the Society of Foreign Missions of Paris, were on Sept. 9, 1659 appointed respectively apostolic vicars of Tonkin, of Cochinchina and of Nanking, and at the same time administrators of five provinces of the southwest, of four of the southeast and of five of the center, north and northeast of China. The first two arrived in the East in 1664 and 1662 respectively, while the third died in India in 1662.

Thus after the arrival of the first Augustinians in 1680, there also arrived in China in 1684 Pallu, appointed apostolic vicar of Fukien, and his successor in this office, Charles Maigrot. With Maigrot begins a more acute phase of the question of the rites, which brought about a new examination in Rome and the sending to China of two legates, Charles de Tournon and Ambrose Mezzabarba, who irritated K'ang Hsi all the more, since he could not understand how foreigners, ignorant of the language and history of China, could presume to pass judgment on the meaning of certain texts and certain customs of the country that were thousands of years old.

From there to persecution there was little distance. And persecution, strongly influenced by that of neighboring Japan, more or less everywhere, open or underhanded, violent or veiled, practically extended from the first decade of the 18th century to about the middle of the 19th century, killing missionaries and Christians and destroying not a few churches. To these evils was added in 1773 the suppression of the Society of Jesus throughout the world and therefore also in China, where, during a little less than two centuries (1583-1773), no fewer than 472 Jesuits had labored, some of whom had been truly eminent men in various fields. To replace the Jesuits of Peking in some way, the Lazarists were called, and they arrived in 1784. But the persecution nonetheless raged. The total number of Catholics between 1800 and 1850 seems to have remained between 200,000 and 250,000. During this time there were probably fewer than 40 European missionaries in the country and about 80 Chinese priests. Without a new turn of events, the Church in China would probably have perished.

6. The international turning point (1840-1900)

But the turning point came. On June 5, 1840 the imperial commissioner of Canton, wishing rightly to suppress the opium trade that was in the hands of the English, threw more than 20,000 chests of this drug into the sea. This was the pretext for the immediate war, which, naturally, was won by the English. On Aug. 29, 1842 China had to sign the first international treaty of modern times, soon followed by others with America and France. On the occasion of the treaty with France, which was watching for the opportune moment to replace Portugal as the protecting power of the Missions, a double decree was issued, one in 1844 by which the Chinese were permitted to follow the Catholic religion, and the other in 1846 by which the ancient penalties against Catholics were abolished. The Church, taking advantage of this state of affairs, begins to live in the open.

There remained in China, as has been seen, only some Franciscans, not many Lazarists, a few Dominicans, and a certain number of members of the Foreign Missions of Paris. With the Society of Jesus re-established by Pius VII in 1814, from 1842 it resumed its place in China, specifically in the surroundings of Shanghai and then of Sienhsien. With hospitals, asylums and orphanages opened by the treaties, it became possible for the first time for religious women too to lend their work. The first were the Daughters of Charity, who arrived in Macao in 1847 and shortly afterward in Ningpo. The following year the Sisters of St. Paul of Chartres also arrived in Hong Kong, which had been ceded to England.

The killing of a French missionary, Auguste Chapdelaine, in 1856, and somewhat rough treatment inflicted by the Chinese on some English sailors, provided France and England, with the tacit consent of the United States and Russia, the pretext to move against China and to oblige it in 1858 to sign the treaties of Tientsin, with the four Powers mentioned above. The entry of Anglo-French troops into the capital in 1860 obliged China to sign the Convention of Peking, by which it found itself forced to open its doors to foreigners. Between 1861 and 1869 China had to sign other treaties with Prussia, Denmark, Holland, Spain, Belgium, Italy and Austria. In them the principle of religious freedom was sanctioned, the edicts against Christians were abrogated, and protection was promised to Catholic missionaries furnished with a passport by the French consul. Thus, with the tacit consent of the other powers and especially of the Holy See, there was introduced the practice, even if not the right, of seeing in France the protecting power of the missions, a practice that continued undisturbed and often very profitable for the Church for about twenty years, from 1860 to 1880. In this way the legal status of the Church in China changed.

This made possible the arrival of new missionaries. The first members of the young Society of Foreign Missions of Milan arrived in Hong Kong in 1858. The Scheut Fathers arrived in 1865 and soon took charge of Mongolia. After an interruption of more than a century, the Augustinians returned to Hunan in 1879. The seminary of the Sts. Peter and Paul, newly founded in Rome, sent its first members to Shensi in 1885. The first German fathers of the Society of the Divine Word of Steyl arrived in 1879 and from 1882 began to work in Shantung. The Trappists too founded a Trappist monastery at Yangkiaping, in present-day Hopenh, in 1883. Finally, as a new development, the non-priest teachers also arrived, that is, the Brothers of the Christian Schools in Hong Kong in 1870 and the Marist Brothers in Shanghai in 1893. The missionaries were followed by the missionary sisters: the Canossians in Hong Kong in 1860, the Auxiliaries of Purgatory in Shanghai in 1867, the Sisters of Providence of Portieux in Mukden in 1875, the Franciscan Missionaries of Mary in Chefoo in 1886 and the Dominicans in Fukien in 1889. Finally the Carmelites too founded a house in Shanghai in 1869.

But persecutions were not lacking, both in the years 1850-69, at the time of the Trappin [T'ai P'in] insurrection, and during the Tientsin massacre in 1870 and especially in 1900, at the time of the so-called Boxers or "Boxers."

7. The magnificent flowering of the 20th century (1900-49)

With the new times, the old C. collapsed forever. In 1905 the ancient system of examinations collapsed, and with it the ancient Confucian culture. Schools multiplied, from elementary schools to universities. In 1911 the millennia-old monarchy collapsed and C., under the impulse of Sun Yat-sen, the herald of the Three Principles of the People, constituted itself as a republic. Within the family, the seclusion of women came to an end; women not only study and attend universities, but do not fear to enter even political life.

This collapse of the old and this need for the new facilitated the expansion of Catholicism. First of all, the number of Catholics increased rapidly. In 1900 they were 742,000; the first million was reached in 1907, the second in 1921, and the third in 1938; the statistics of 1947-48 put them at 3,275,000, to which, however, some two hundred thousand catechumens must be added.

The number of foreign missionaries also increased. In 1900 they were 886 and belonged to ten institutes. In 1946-47, on the other hand, they were 3,066 and belonged to 37 foreign institutes, of which 26 had one or several territories reserved exclusively to them; to them, all priests, were added 421 foreign lay brothers. Once modern schools were opened to girls too after 1905, the Sisters were able to work not only in nurseries, orphanages, hospitals, dispensaries, clinics of every kind, but also in the scholastic field with girls' schools and colleges. Thus the female missionary institutes rose from 10 in 1900 to 59 in 1946-47, with as many as 2,046 members.

To this army of Christ, come from outside, must be added the other, no less considerable, formed of priests and nuns of the country. After the first two Chinese to enter the Society of Jesus on 1 Jan. 1591, Gregory Louenzao [Lo Wen-tsao] (v.), a Dominican, was the first Chinese priest (1656) and the first Chinese bishop (1685). The first Chinese Jesuit was ordained in Rome around 1670; three other Chinese Jesuits were ordained in C. by Louenzao on 1 Aug. 1688. Among the 472 Jesuits who worked in the Middle Kingdom between 1583 and 1773, 81 were Chinese, of whom 48 were priests. Even greater is the proportion among the Lazarists; out of a total of 593 members from 1697 to 1911, fully 195 were Chinese, all priests except eight. In Szechwan alone the missionaries of the Paris Foreign Missions between 1781 and 1821 led 46 young Chinese to the altar. Between 1732 and 1888, fully 106 Chinese studied at the college of the Holy Family, founded by Matteo Ripa, in Naples, reaching the priesthood. These Chinese priests, who around the middle of the 18th century numbered barely 15, a century later had risen to 140, then in 1900 they reached 400, to rise further to 1569 in 1929 and to 2527 in the years 1946-1947. In this very rapid development of the Chinese clergy, two dates are of particular importance: 26 Oct. 1926, when Pius XI wished to consecrate with his own hands in St. Peter's the first six Chinese bishops of modern times, and 18 Febr. 1946, when Pius XII, for the first time in the history of the Church, raised to the cardinalate an authentic son of C. Before the last world war, slightly fewer than 1000 students of philosophy and theology and more than 5000 boys educated in the minor seminaries and apostolic schools assured the future of this Chinese clergy. The first Congregation of exclusively Chinese virgins, that of the Presentandine, was founded in Shanghai in 1855; today these exclusively native Congregations number about sixty. The Chinese religious women who belong either to one of these exclusively native Congregations or to those others which, alongside the Western ones, also accept Chinese women, in 1946-1947 numbered 4735.

Modern times have accelerated but have not created for Catholics the movement of education; it suffices to recall the college of St. Ignatius of Zikawei, near Shanghai, founded as early as 1850. It is certain, however, that during the 20th century schools for boys and girls of every grade multiplied wonderfully. Higher education assured to secular students, Catholics and non-Catholics, in three universities: the University "L'Aurora" founded in Shanghai in 1903 and directed by the French Jesuits; the Catholic University of Peking, founded in 1925 by the American Benedictines, but which passed as early as 1933 to the Society of the Divine Word; and the University of Tientsin, directed by the French Jesuits, which became a university in 1947 but whose origins as an institute of higher studies go back to 1922. In 1946-47, about 4500 students attended these three universities, of whom about fifty were priests and more than 400 were pupils of the women's section of "L'Aurora" directed by the Religious of the Society of the Sacred Heart. Moreover in 1947-48 C. counted 189 colleges of higher or secondary studies with a Catholic student body of 7350 pupils and a non-Catholic one of 39,698. Two thousand primary schools were attended by about 60 thousand Catholics and by 136 thousand pagans. Counting all the other schools, there was a school population of about 320 thousand children who attended nearly 4450 different schools.

Ecclesiastically, C. from 1946 onward is divided into dioceses and archdioceses, the former now numbering 108 and the latter 20. Of these, 21 are in the hands of the Chinese secular clergy, which sees entrusted to it the major cities, Peking, Nanking, Mukden, Shanghai and soon, without doubt, also Canton. Moreover two dioceses are entrusted to the Chinese Lazarists and one to the native Franciscans. Furthermore a diocese entrusted to the French Jesuits has a Chinese Jesuit as bishop; one entrusted to the Dutch Lazarists has a Chinese Lazarist as bishop; and two dioceses entrusted to the German Verbi have so far had two Chinese Verbi as bishops. There are therefore altogether 33 Ordinaries of Chinese nationality, of whom 28 are invested with the episcopal character.

The French protectorate of the missions, which established itself between 1860 and 1880, in time became rather harmful to the Church and odious to the other powers. Therefore, under the blows especially of Germany and Italy, it has for some time fallen into disuse. Today the Church admits that every nation has the right to protect its own nationals wherever they may be, but not the subjects of other nations, which annuls every protectorate as it was understood during the end of the 19th century. This protectorate of France had already several times, in 1881, in 1886 and in 1918, prevented C. from having normal diplomatic relations with the Holy See. But in 1922 Pius XI, without asking anything of France, instituted the apostolic delegation and appointed the first delegate, who in 1924 convoked the first plenary council at Shanghai, whose acts, approved by Rome in 1928, were published in 1929 (I. Antoniutti, Il primo sinodo cinese, in Il pensiero missionario, 1 [1929], pp. 182-94). In May 1942 Japan sent a representative to the Holy See. C., then at war with Japan, could not fail to take the same step. Therefore already in Febr. 1943 C. sent a minister plenipotentiary to whom the Vatican responded in 1946 with the sending of an internuncio. France this time kept silent.

The Church of C. already bears the seal of the divine. It is so far the mother of 62 blesseds, all martyrs. Of these, 19 were beatified by Leo XIII in the years 1889, 1893 and 1900, 14 by Pius X in 1929 and 29 by Pius XII in 1946. Among these blesseds, there are six bishops and thirteen European priests, and four Chinese priests, one European layman, seven European nuns, seven seminarians, eight catechists, nine Christians, two virgins, two widows, all Chinese. They were martyred between 1648 and 1900:

Francisco Fernández de Capillas (d. 1648), beatified 2 May 1909, protomartyr of China; Peter Martyr Sanz, bishop (d. 1747), beatified 14 May 1893; Francisco Serrano (d. 1748), beatified 14 May 1893; Joaquín Royo (d. 1748), beatified 14 May 1893; John Aleobor (d. 1748), beatified 14 May 1893; Francisco Díaz (d. 1748), beatified 14 May 1893; Peter U, Chinese catechist (d. 1814), beatified 27 May 1900; Joseph Tchang-Ta-Pong, Chinese catechist (d. 1815), beatified 2 May 1900; Gabriel Taurino Dufresse, bishop (d. 1815), beatified 27 May 1900; Augustine Tchao-Soung, Chinese priest (d. 1815), beatified 27 May 1900; John Lantrua of Triora (d. 1816), beatified 27 May 1900; Joseph Yuen-Tsai-Te, Chinese priest (d. 1817), beatified 27 May 1900; Paul Lieou-Han-Tso, Chinese priest (d. 1818), beatified 27 May 1900; Francisco Regia Clet, Lazarist (d. 1820), beatified 27 May 1900; Thaddeus Lieou, Chinese priest (d. 1823), beatified 27 May 1900; Peter Lieou-Ouen-Yuen, Chinese catechist (d. 1834), beatified 27 May 1900; Joachim Ho-Kai-Tche, Chinese layman (d. 1839), beatified 27 May 1900; John Gabriel Perboyre, Lazarist (d. 1840), beatified 10 Nov. 1889; Lawrence Pe-Man, Chinese layman (d. 1856), beatified 27 May 1900; Auguste Chapdelaine, of the Paris Foreign Missions (d. 1856), beatified 27 May 1900; Agnes Tsao-Koue, Chinese widow (d. 1856), beatified 27 May 1900; Jerome Lou-Tin-Mey, Chinese catechist (d. 1858), beatified 2 May 1900; Lawrence Ouang-Ping, Chinese catechist (d. 1858), beatified 2 May 1900; Agatha Lin-Tchao, virgin (d. 1858), beatified 2 May 1900; Joseph Tchang-Yo-Yang, seminarian (d. 1861), beatified 2 May 1900; Paul Tchen-Tchang-Ping, seminarian (d. 1861), beatified 2 May 1900; John Baptist Lo, Chinese layman (d. 1861), beatified 2 May 1900; Mary Ouang, Chinese widow (d. 1861), beatified 2 May 1900; John Peter Néel, of the Paris Foreign Missions (d. 1862), beatified 2 May 1900; Martin Ou-Sue-Chang, catechist (d. 1862), beatified 2 May 1900; John Tchang, Chinese layman (d. 1862), beatified 2 May 1900; John Tchen, Chinese layman (d. 1862), beatified 2 May 1900; Lucy Y, Chinese virgin (d. 1862), beatified 2 May 1900. To these must be added the 29 martyrs, victims of the Boxer persecution, who died on 4, 7 and 9 July 1900 and were beatified by Pius XII on 24 Nov. 1946: John M. Grassi, bishop; Francesco Fogolla, bishop; Antonio Fantosati, bishop; Elia Facchini; Teodorico Balat; Giuseppe M. Gambaro; Cesidio Giacomantonio; Andrew Bauer; Maria Ermina of Jesus (Tema Grivot); Maria della Pace (Marianna Giuliani); Maria Chiara (Clelia Nanetti); Maria di S. Natalia (Giovanna Maria Kerguin); Maria di S. Giusto (Anna Francesca Moreau); Maria Adolfina (Anna Caterina Dierlex); Maria Amandina (Paolina Jeuris); five seminarians and nine servants.

Besides these, many others gave their lives for the faith and await the glory of the altars.

In particular: T. M. Gentili, Memorie di un missionario domenicano della C., 3 vols., Rome 1887-88; H. Havret, La Stèle chrétienne de Si-ngan-fou, 3 vols., Shanghai 1895-1902; J. Tobar, Inscriptions juives de K'ai-fong-fou, ibid. 1912; J. de la Servière, Histoire de la mission du Kiangnan, 2 vols., ibid. 1914; A. Jann, Die katholischen Missionen in Indien, China und Japan. Ihre Organisation und das portugistische Patronat vom 15. bis ins 18. Jahrhundert, Paderborn 1915; B. Martínez, Historia de las misiones Augustinianas en China, Madrid 1918; J. Brucker, La Compagnie de Jésus. Esquisse de son Institut et de son histoire, Paris 1919; J. M. Planchet, Documents sur les martyrs de Pékin pendant la persécution des Boxers, 2 vols., Beijing 1922-23; id., Le cimetière et les oeuvres catholiques de Chala, 1610-27, ibid. 1928; O. Maas, Die Wiedereröffnung der Franziskanermission in China in der Neuzeit, Münster in W. 1926; B. M. Biermann, Die Anfänge der neueren Dominikanermission in China, ibid. 1927; P. M. D'Elia, Catholic Native Episcopacy in China. Being an Online of the Formation and Growth of the Chinese Catholic clergy (1300-1926), Shanghai 1927; id., The Catholic Missions in China. A short sketch of the History of the Catholic Church in China from the earliest records to our own days, ibid. 1934; id., Fonti Ricciane. Documenti originali concernenti Matteo Ricci e la storia delle prime relazioni tra l'Europa e la C. (1570-1615),

3 vols., Rome 1942-49; id., Contributo dei missionari cattolici alla scambievole conoscenza della C. e dell'Europa, in Le missioni cattoliche e la cultura dell'Oriente, ibid. 1943, pp. 27-109; id., L'istituzione della gerarchia episcopale e dell'internuocatura in C., in Studia Missionaria, 2 (1946), pp. 1-31; id., La nuova C., in L'Universale, 1 (1946), pp. 1-17; id., Galileo in C. Relazioni attraverso il collegio Romano tra Galileo e i Gesuiti scienziati missionari in C. (1610-40), Rome 1947; K. S. Latourette, A History of the Christian Missions in China, London 1929 (with a very rich bibliography); A. Van den Wyngert, Sinica Franciscana, 4 vols., Quaracchi: I, 1929; II, III, IV, 1942; A. C. Moule, Christian in China before the year 1550, London 1930; L. Thier, Notices biographiques et bibliographiques sur les Musées de l'ancienne mission de Chine (1525-1775), 2 vols., Shanghai 1932-34; A. Väh, Johann Adam Schall von Bell S. I., Cologne 1933; H. Bernard, Aux portes de la Chine, Tientsin 1933; id., Le p. Mathieu Ricci et la société chinoise de son temps, 2 vols., ibid. 1937; N. Gubbles, Trois siècles d'apostolat. Histoire du catholicisme au Hu-hwang depuis les origines 1587 jusqu'à 1870, Paris 1934; A. B. Duvigneau, S. Thomas a-t-il porté l'Evangile jusqu'en Chine?, Beijing 1936; P. Y. Sacki, The Nestorian Documents and Relics in China, Tokyo 1937; G. Messina, Cristianesimo, buddhismo, manicheismo nell'Asia antica, Rome 1947. For recent statistics: Annuaire de l'Eglise catholique en Chine, 1948; Zi-ka-wei, Shanghai 1948.

Pasquale M. D'Elia

IV. ART

The origins of Chinese artistic civilization can be traced back to prehistoric times.

In the period extending up to the 7th century A.D., known as that of the six dynasties, the most important event was the introduction of Buddhism into China (1st century A.D.), which entered art around the early years of the 5th century and especially informed sculpture, both in highly decorated votive steles and in the effigies of sanctuaries — today unfortunately for the most part lost — where the figure is conceived with an original stylization. In this era the types of an indigenous painting made their first appearances, known only through more recent copies. From 648 to 906, in the T'ang period, the art of China reached its highest peak and achieved its widest diffusion beyond national boundaries. The sculptures depicting chiefly divinities (Bodhisattva, Buddha, Kouan-yin, etc.) free themselves from conventionalism and take on a new expressiveness in which an intimate feeling is revealed. Fine examples of this period in Italy are the stone sculptures, recently restored, formerly in the Gualino collection and today in that of the Banca d'Italia in Rome.

Painting assumed great importance precisely during the T'ang dynasty. Nourished by great masters such as Wu Tao Tzu and Wang Wei, true founders of sacred and landscape painting, inspired in content by the great Indian religious cycles, it was and remained essentially based on line and drawing, wholly ignoring the problems of color and chiaroscuro alive in Western Chinese art. But the most splendid Chinese pictorial production occurred during the three following epochs — those of the five dynasties, of the Sung and of the Yan — which are grouped together for the identity of style and technique. Execution on paper or silk benefited from an exceptional skill, and the very wide use of glazes, especially in the so-called southern school, contributed to that refinement. Flowers, birds, fantastic animals and imaginary architectures were the recurring subjects. Among the most celebrated artists are to be remembered Chu Hsi, Kuo Hsi, who favored black and white, the emperor Hui Tsung and the delicate "quesists" Ma Yuan and Hsia Kuei. In parallel with painting, ceramics reached in this period their greatest splendor through the perfection of the glazes, the variety of decorative solutions, the preciousness of the colors (azure, purple, ivory, pearl gray) whose harmony is exemplary.

Once this very lofty experience was concluded, an era of decadence began to take shape for the art of China. During the long period of the Ming dynasty, the pure forms of the T'ang period froze into an ever more pervasive mannerism in which the demand for an outward grace and pleasantness prevailed. For this reason the Ming period produced the greatest number of objects of the so-called minor arts, from lacquer to inlays, to ivories, to fabrics and to enamels often imitating forms already widely diffused in Japan. The use of kaolin, known together with feldspar in the Sung period, was greatly expanded, determining the historical origin of the famous Chinese porcelain, whose first and greatest center of diffusion was Ching-te chen. Dependent on the preceding ceramics for its forms and decorations, it also drew motifs from painting and from textile art and was more exuberant in its always dazzling and vivid colors. The dating of Ming objects is facilitated by the imperial marks often applied, and cataloguing generally follows the name of the emperors who caused such craftsmanship to flourish. Porcelain continued to maintain a very high level also throughout the entire Ts'ing dynasty (from 1644 until 1912), while painting and sculpture were reduced to weary repetitions of ancient forms. The infiltration of a Western idiom into the forms of Chinese art is recent, but the results have not been significant.

The architecture of China holds a place apart, having preserved unchanged throughout the entire course of its civilization the simple constructive module, varied only by vague and slight ornamental solutions. The great use of wood, the notable importance given to the roof, an essential element in the stylistic economy of every building, the gracefulness of the decorations and above all the setting of the structures within the landscape form the original characteristics of Chinese architecture. Religious architecture was likewise informed by the same canons, with a greater simplification of motifs, if one excepts certain singular buildings such as the Temple of Heaven in Beijing and the rare surviving temples near the imperial tombs.

Giovanni Carandente

V. CHRISTIAN ART

1. The origins

The Jesuit Giovanni Da Rocha (1565-1623), a missionary in China, had composed a book on the Rosary and wished to make it popular with suitable illustrations. At that time some copies had reached China of the famous book of illustrated Gospels, compiled by Fr. Jerome Nadal, rich in 150 beautiful plates due in large part to the Roman painter B. Passeri and engraved in Antwerp.

Fr. Da Rocha gave the book to a skilled Chinese painter, who translated the engravings into Chinese. The translation did not succeed in concealing the European character of the compositions.

In some way connected to that iconographic cycle are six paintings on silk, discovered by M. B. Laufer at Sain (Shensi). Similar efforts were also made by the Jesuit Giulio Aleni in 1633 in his Chinese work Explanation of the Gospel by means of images, and by the Jesuit Johann Adam Schall von Bell, in 1640, in the Chinese work Prints offered to the emperor. It is very probable that from the movement created by the Jesuits derive two images of the Blessed Virgin of the 17th-18th centuries; the first is preserved at the Field Museum in Chicago and reveals its derivation from a copy of the Madonna of S. Maria Maggiore; the second, with more Chinese features, is preserved at the British Museum in London. It is also worth recalling the artistic activity carried out by the Jesuits at the court of Peking and mentioning the brothers G. Castiglione (1688-1766), Attiret (1702-68) and Fr. Sichelbarth (1708-80). They adopted the Chinese style and their paintings were highly esteemed and sought after. But until now no work of theirs on a sacred subject was known. C. Costantini had searched for one in vain in the museum of the imperial palace of Peking. A few years ago, in a country house outside Peking, two paintings were discovered, unsigned, but which by their stylistic characteristics are certainly by Castiglione: they represent St. Michael the Archangel and the Guardian Angel. But the initiative of the Jesuits had no sequel. In the countryside, where local craftsmen were to be employed, there was only some example of churches in the Chinese style. But the great centers believed they were giving prestige to religion with buildings imitating traditional European styles and with printed pictures imported from Europe. At Tonglù near Paoting, in a Madonna, a rare exception in modern Christian painting, the naive artist, at the beginning of this century, depicted the Madonna as a Chinese empress. Given the recent consoling development of the Catholic missions in C., it was time that thought should also be given to the problem of art and that an attempt should be made to Christianize the most noble Chinese art.

2. New movement in favor of Chinese Christian art

C. Costantini, having arrived in C. as apostolic delegate in 1922, had the impression that the ancient Chinese world had collapsed with the empire, but that, through a profound upheaval and the excesses of an exasperated nationalism, a new C. was preparing itself.

In this crisis of reform and growth, he thought that in a country which possesses the dignity of a great and ancient art, Christian art too had to join the new directions by making use of local forces, and this also for a reason of missionary methodology. Without doubt Chinese art, by its spiritual character, lent itself admirably to interpreting Catholic thought and to satisfying the requirements of the liturgy. On the other hand this demonstrated how the Catholic religion was not a foreign religion. It was necessary, however, to reinforce theory with practice. In 1925, the Benedictine architect D. Alberto Gresnigt came to C. He mastered the spirit of Chinese art, and gave the plans for and directed the construction of the beautiful Catholic University of Beijing, of the regional seminaries of Hong Kong and Kaifeng, of the church of the Disciples of the Lord at Suanhawa, and attended to other minor works, using in his buildings the elements of traditional Chinese art but impressing upon them a new Christian soul.

What has been done in the field of painting is also very interesting. In 1929 the painter Chen Suan-tu, who possessed an expert sureness in drawing according to the good Chinese tradition and the faculty of rendering things with a lively sense of spirituality and poetry, after having read the Gospels and having taken a look at the apostolic delegation, where he had been invited, at some works of good Christian artists, painted and brought to the delegation itself a silk panel with the Virgin adoring the child.

This delightful Chinese image constitutes the starting point of the new Chinese Christian painting. Having become a Christian and been baptized with the name Luke, he was appointed professor of art at the Catholic University of Beijing and created around himself a family of Christian painters, in which the candor of the primitives shines. Chinese art has offered to the sacred subject a form full of delicate spirituality, and the sacred subject has offered to Chinese artists a new theme, elevated, luminous, powerful, such as to create a true renewal of ancient Chinese art. The painting school of the University of Beijing immediately became a hearth of new ideas and new activities. Exhibitions were held in Shanghai and Beijing, which obtained flattering successes. Alongside the name of Luke Chen one must remember that of two well-known painters, the French prince Pu Chin and Chang-wan-tzu, who also treated sacred subjects. Among the pupils of Luke Chen one may point out Wangsuta, Lu Hung-Nien, Ming-yuan and Hsu Chi-hua; the latter died in the flower of his years in 1937. Nor should it surprise anyone if Chinese Christian painting appears, all at once, adult: the Chinese artists were masters of a pictorial language already refined by the poetic sense of things and by the habit of interpreting religious subjects; their painting was in some way already ready for Christian baptism. Traditional Chinese art, stirred by contact with the naturalistic currents coming from the West, easily finds itself again in the sacred subject and takes refuge with joy in the iconographic forms of ancient religious art.

We are still at the first experiments of a most hoped-for rebirth, but these first flowers are enough to make us look with sure confidence to a springtime of Christian art rising on the distant horizons of the Far East. - See Plates CVII-CVIII.

Celso Costantini