Yan Mo: The voice of Chinese people in the debate of etiquette
2022-12-27
As early as the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, there was a dispute among Catholics who had just come to China. Matteo Ricci and his companion Luo Mingjian had differences in dress. When the Jesuits first entered China, they all wore Buddhist monk clothes. After living in China for 10 years, Matteo Ricci suggested to change to Confucian clothes, while Luo Mingjian insisted on wearing monk clothes. Finally, Matteo Ricci won the support of Fan Li'an, the Jesuits' Oriental General Inspector, and became the winner of the dispute. Subsequently, the Jesuits took Matteo Ricci's pro Confucianism as the main line and implemented the cultural adaptation strategy. They accepted the Chinese native customs in their lifestyle, especially the life characteristics of Confucian scholar bureaucrats, explained the Catholic ethics with the Confucian moral concept, and referred to the "God" of Catholicism with the "Heaven" and "God" in the ancient Chinese classics. What's more, they gave a humanistic interpretation in line with Catholicism to Chinese society's behaviors of worshiping heaven, ancestors and Confucius, which made it possible for Catholicism to integrate into Chinese society. However, this kind of adaptation and integration seems to others to be the loss of the "purity" and "superiority" of Catholicism. After Matteo Ricci's death, his successor Long Huamin took the lead in opposing the translation of "God" with "Heaven", which triggered an internal dispute among the Jesuits. At the Jiading Conference in 1627, the Jesuits decided to roughly maintain Matteo Ricci's missionary strategy, but banned the word "God" and used "God" instead. However, with the arrival of other religious orders in China, the internal dispute of the Jesuits quickly turned into a fierce conflict between the orders, and the debate about Chinese etiquette began to ferment. In 1651, the Chinese Jesuit sent Wei Kuang to Rome to defend Chinese etiquette. Their re expressed Chinese etiquette in secular language was accepted and allowed to be implemented by the Holy See. Later, Chinese Catholicism went through a "prison experience", and all foreign missionaries were sent to live together in Guangzhou. They took this opportunity to reach a basic consensus and continue to maintain Matteo Ricci's rules. But after some new missionaries came to China, the debate began to intensify. In 1681, Yan Dang arrived in China. In 1693, the bishop, who was later described by Kangxi as "neither literate nor good at Chinese language", issued an order in his Fujian diocese demanding the prohibition of Chinese etiquette, so the dispute arose again. In order to defend Chinese etiquette, Jesus will collect evidence and arguments in China. These evidence materials come from many Chinese believers, Yan Mo is one of them. Yan Mo, with the character of Ding You, was born in Longxi, Zhangzhou, Fujian Province. The date of birth is unknown, probably in the middle of the 17th century. The Annals of Longxi County records that he was a Gongsheng. His brother-in-law once went to Beijing to participate in the imperial examination, and his cousin also participated in the imperial examination. It can be seen that his family is a gentry family. Yan Zanhua, Yan Mo's father, was a student of Ai Julio, a pioneer of Catholicism in Fujian. He was also baptized when he was young, and his nephew was also a Catholic. This shows that his family is a typical family combining Catholicism with Confucianism. As a scholar, Yan Mo wanted to go to the Confucius Temple to attend the ceremony; As a Chinese, he will go to the ancestral hall to participate in the ancestor worship ceremony; As a Catholic, he had to go to church regularly to attend mass, which was his role in life, and he had to defend himself. For Xiangyan
Edit：luoyu Responsible editor：jiajia
Source：mzb.com
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