Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Conventions
- Introduction
- 1 Maritime Europe and the Ming
- 2 Learning from Heaven: The Introduction of Christianity and Other Western Ideas into Late Ming China
- 3 Catholic Missions and the Expansion of Christianity, 1644–1800
- 4 Trade and Diplomacy with Maritime Europe, 1644–c. 1800
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
3 - Catholic Missions and the Expansion of Christianity, 1644–1800
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Preface
- Conventions
- Introduction
- 1 Maritime Europe and the Ming
- 2 Learning from Heaven: The Introduction of Christianity and Other Western Ideas into Late Ming China
- 3 Catholic Missions and the Expansion of Christianity, 1644–1800
- 4 Trade and Diplomacy with Maritime Europe, 1644–c. 1800
- Bibliography
- Index
- References
Summary
Amid the Terrors of War
When Li Zicheng passed through the gates of Beijing in 1644, the only Westerner in the capital was the Jesuit priest Johann Adam Schall von Bell (1592–1666). A few years earlier the Chongzhen emperor, the last of the Ming dynasty to rule in Beijing, ordered him to make cannons for the defense of the city. Having heard the news of the advance of Li’s forces, the emperor tried to flee, but the eunuchs thwarted his efforts and fired on him the same cannon he had ordered Schall to cast. Later that same day the emperor rode past the Jesuit residence on his way to Coal Hill (Meishan) and eventual suicide. Schall had served the Chongzhen emperor for nearly two decades and declared that as a ruler he was “almost the greatest in the world and second to none in the goodness of his character,” but “with no companion and abandoned by all, through his imprudence [he] perished by an unworthy death at the age of thirty-six.” The Ming Empire, which had lasted 276 years, was now extinct, but Schall added:
Although the emperor, to my sorrow, did not follow me when I showed him the way of salvation, yet he merits a deep lament because he not only sustained Christianity, which had been maintained in China and in the court by his grandfather [Wanli emperor, r. 1572–1620], but he also praised and fostered it, to the maximum advantage of his subjects. He would have done even more had he not died such a violent and untimely death.
With such a noteworthy expression of sympathy for the last Ming monarch, Schall alluded to the uncertain fate of Christianity under a new regime.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- China and Maritime Europe, 1500–1800Trade, Settlement, Diplomacy, and Missions, pp. 135 - 182Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010
References
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