SCHALL von BELL, JOHANN ADAM. - Jesuit, missionary in China and astronomer, b. at Cologne on 1 May 1592, d. at Peking on 15 Aug. 1666. He entered the Society of Jesus on 21 Oct. 1611, was ordained priest, and left Lisbon for China on 16 Apr. 1618. He arrived at Macao on 15 July 1619 and remained there until the autumn of 1622, when, after the persecution had ended, he was able to go to Peking, arriving on 25 Jan. 1623.
Once he had learned the language, in 1627 he was sent as a missionary to Sian in Shensi, from where, in the second half of 1630, he was recalled to Peking to assist in the correction of the calendar. A serious error in calculation—the exclusion of 21 June 1629—by Chinese astronomers had led the Emperor to entrust the correction of the calendar to the missionaries, assisted by two distinguished Chinese scholars, Dr. Paolo Siùoamucchi (Hsi Kuang-ch'i) and Dr. Leone Licezao (Li Chih-tsao). For this reason Fr. S. was recalled from Shensi, and Fr. Giacomo Rho, a Milanese, from Shensi as well. In five years, with the help of about a dozen Christian scholars, the two missionaries published a collection of some 150 small volumes on mathematics in Chinese. On 28 Feb. 1634 they presented to the Emperor the first calendar corrected according to Western methods. After the deaths of the two Chinese colleagues (1630 and 1633) and Fr. Rho (1638), S. continued and expanded his work, constructing instruments of astronomy, optics, hydraulics, music, and even artillery, casting cannons to repel the incursions of the Manchus. With the Manchu triumph in 1644, S. did not lose the favour he had enjoyed under the last Ming emperor. Before the end of that year, S. was appointed President of the Bureau of Astronomy despite his protests. On 3 Apr. 1664, Alexander VII declared viva voce that, given the circumstances, it was permissible for S. to accept such an honour, despite his profession of the four vows and the doubts of his confreres. As for the insertion into the calendar of auspicious or inauspicious days and certain superstitious details, S. had to prove that he was responsible only for the purely scientific part of the calendar’s compilation.
S. found himself in a delicate situation when he was granted (1658) the dignity of a first-class mandarin, for which three generations before him and three after had to be ennobled. To make this possible, at the Emperor’s wish he had to adopt as his son the son of one of his servants—an imprudence for which S. publicly asked forgiveness a year before his death. This imprudence would be maliciously exploited in 1751 by the apostate former Capuchin N. Platel.
While engaged in scientific studies, S. also found time and means to carry out true missionary work at court. He began by converting three eunuchs. Since the ladies of the palace never left 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, and in 1642 a singular quasi-religious community of about fifty fervent Christian ladies, under the direction of a superior, prayed there. Through the eunuchs and the Christian ladies, S. aimed at the conversion of the Emperor himself. Shih Chih (Shun-chih), the first Manchu Emperor, was on very familiar terms with S., visiting him about twenty times a year and conversing familiarly with him. S. took advantage of this to give useful advice to the young monarch, so much so that it has been said that from 1651 to 1661 S. was almost like a regent of China. Had the Emperor been instructed in the truths of the faith, he might have converted, but he 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 that culminated in the persecution of 1664, the principal instigator of which was a Muslim named Lambertus (Yang Kuang-hsien), who posed as an astronomer. He accused S. of high treason and of introducing a pernicious religion and a false astronomy. After a trial and imprisonment of seven months, on 15 Apr. 1665 S. was condemned to be cut to pieces; instead, he was finally released on 18 May but died a year later, on 15 Aug. 1666. When the following year the young Kangxi (Camssi) took control of the government, he ordered a review of the trial and approved the sentence of S.’s full rehabilitation and the decapitation of his rival, who was later pardoned on account of his old age.