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3 - Catholic Missions and the Expansion of Christianity, 1644–1800

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

John E. Wills, Jr
Affiliation:
University of Southern California
John Cranmer-Byng
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
John W. Witek
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
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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, 1500–1800
Trade, Settlement, Diplomacy, and Missions
, pp. 135 - 182
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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References

Van den Wyngaert, MargiottiSinica FranciscanaRome 1975
Civiltà Bresciana, FondazioneAnnaliNettetal 1997Google Scholar
Needham, JosephScience and Civilisation in ChinaCambridge 1959Google Scholar

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