SCHALL VON BELL, JOHANN ADAM. — Jesuit, missionary in China and astronomer, born in Cologne on 1 May 1592, died in Beijing on 15 August 1666. He entered the Society of Jesus on 21 October 1611 and, after being ordained a priest, departed from Lisbon for China on 16 April 1618. He arrived in Macao on 15 July 1619 and remained there until the autumn of 1622, when, persecution having ended, he was able to go to Beijing, where he arrived on 25 January 1623.
As soon as he had learned the language, in 1627 he was sent as a missionary to Sian, in Shensi, whence, in the second half of 1630, he was recalled to Beijing for the reform of the calendar. A major error in calculating the solar eclipse of 21 June 1629 on the part of the Chinese astronomers had led the Emperor to entrust the reform of the calendar to the Missionaries, assisted by two distinguished Christians, Dr. Paolo Siücoamcchi (Hsi Kuang-ch'i) and Dr. Leone Licezao (Li Chih-tsao). For this reason Fr. S. was recalled from Shensi, and Fr. Giacomo Rho of Milan from Shansi; within five years, assisted by a dozen Christian scholars, the two missionaries published a collection of approximately 150 mathematical booklets in Chinese. On 28 February 1634 they presented the Emperor with the first calendar corrected according to Western methods. After the deaths of the two Chinese colleagues (1630 and 1633) and of Rho (1638), S. continued and expanded his work, constructing instruments for astronomy, optics, hydraulics, music, and even artillery, casting cannon to repel the incursions of the Manchus. With their triumph in 1644, S. did not lose the favor he had enjoyed under the last emperor of the Mim or Ming; before the end of that year S. was appointed president of the Office of Astronomy despite his protests. On 3 April 1664 Alexander VII declared « vivace vocis oraculo » that, given the circumstances, S. was permitted to accept such an honor, notwithstanding his profession of four vows and the related doubts of his brethren. As for the inclusion in the calendar of auspicious or inauspicious days and of certain superstitious particulars, S. had to prove that he was responsible only for the purely scientific part of the compilation of the calendar. He found himself in a delicate situation when he was awarded (1658) the dignity of a mandarin of the first class, for which three generations before him and three after him were to be ennobled; to make this possible, by the Emperor’s command he had to adopt as his son the son of one of his servants, an imprudence for
the Catholic population of the Netherlands in national political life, from which it had been excluded following the Reformation. Without ever having belonged to any ministry, he remained until his death the undisputed leader and emancipator of his fellow believers, whom he united in a single political party, and as its spiritual head he later initiated (despite strong internal opposition) the so-called coalition policy with the parties
for which S. publicly asked forgiveness one year before his death. This imprudence would be maliciously exploited in 1751 by the apostate former Capuchin N. Platel.
Although occupied with scientific studies, S. found the time and means to carry out the work of a true missionary at court. He began by converting three eunuchs. Since the palace ladies never went outside the « forbidden city », and no one could speak with them except the eunuchs, S. used these three Christian eunuchs to reach them. A chapel of the Blessed Virgin was erected within the imperial palace grounds, and in it, in 1642, a singular quasi-religious community of about fifty fervent Christian ladies prayed under the direction of a superior. Through the eunuchs and the Christian ladies, S. aimed at the conversion of the Emperor himself. Scioence (Shuh Chih), the first Manchu Emperor, was on very familiar terms with S. and went to visit him about twenty times a year, spending time with him in friendly conversation; S. took advantage of this to give useful advice to the young Monarch, so much so that it has been possible to assert that, from 1651 to 1661, S. was almost like a regent of China. Instructed in the truths of the faith, the Emperor might have converted had he not died almost suddenly at the age of 23 in 1661.
This death gave the opponents of European astronomy the opportunity to launch a campaign of defamation which culminated in the persecution of 1664. Its principal instigator was a Muslim named Iamcoamsien (Yang Kuang-hsien), who passed himself off as an astronomer. He accused S. of high treason and of having introduced a pernicious religion and a false astronomy. After a trial and seven months’ imprisonment, on 15 April 1665 S. was condemned to be cut into tiny pieces; instead, he was finally released on 18 May, but died a year later, on 15 August 1666. When, the following year, the young Camsci (Kanglui) took over the government, he ordered a review of the trial and approved the sentence fully rehabilitating S. and decapitating his rival, who was subsequently pardoned because of his old age.