| Chinese Jesuits belonged to a new religious group which appeared in Chinese society since the Society of Jesus as the representative of Catholic Church entered China during the Late Ming period and less studied by Chinese and Western Scholars.This dissertation will be conducted in the field of Chinese modern history study,and with the historical and religious perspectives of Marxism to investigate the religious and scholarly activities of Chinese Jesuits who came from the Kiangnan area during the Late Qing period,also explore their roles and limitations in the indigenization process of modern Chinese Catholic church and the cultural interactions between China and the West.This dissertation is divided into six chapters.Chapter One is the introduction.This part will introduce the reasons of the topic,definitions of related concepts and the summary of research situation,research methods and the resources of historical materials in Chinese,English,French and Latin,also the writing structure and thought.Chapter Two will break the limitation of the studies on the history of the Catholic church in Ming and Qing China that focused on famous missionaries and Chinese Christians,draw attention to the appearance and disappearance of Chinese Jesuits before 1840.According to the important time nodes in the history of the Catholic in China,this research will be conducted in three historical stages in order to indicate the intermediary roles Chinese Jesuits played between western missionaries and Chinese Christians,Western culture and Chinese culture,the Catholic church and Chinese Society.Chapter Three will examine the re-appearance and development of Chinese Jesuits in Kiangnan area during the late Qing period,and analysis the developing stages,the internal structure,the social location and generational pedigree of this religious group.This study indicates that the integrative Chinese and Western religious and secular educations those Chinese Jesuits received,made them developed a special religiosity and internationality.As the fruits of the combination between Catholic Church and Chinese society,they came from the local society and served the local Catholic communities,this kind of locality was the crucial element that affected their religious and scholarly activities.Chapter Four will discuss their religious activities.Firstly,differently from the previous studies on “religious cases” which paid more attentions on the conflicts between Christianity churches and Chinese society,this study will take Huang Bolu and Li Wenyu as cases to investigate their activities on mediating Christians and local non-Christians Chinese people,harmonizing both sides,and their political identity that presented during the process.Secondly,from the perspective of Chinese translation history of the Bible in modern times,this dissertation will inspect the general situation of the Chinese version of the Bible by Chinese Jesuits,and analysis their subjectivity in translating the Bible.Thirdly,this dissertation will systematically investigate Chinese Jesuits' “Apologetic” discourses in shaping the religious and social identity of Chinese Catholics in modern China.Through the above three topics,this study explores the subjectivity position of Chinese Jesuits in the indigenization process of Catholic in modern China.Chapter Five focuses on the academic activities of those Chinese Jesuits.Firstly,it will explore their participations in the scholarly activities of “the spread of Western learning to the East” during the late Qing period,especially their geographical writings and national consciousness revealed therefrom.Secondly,with the help of new historical materials,this dissertation will investigate the academic interactions between Huang Bolu and British Sinologist,then discuss the relationships between Chinese Jesuits and “the spread of Eastern learning to the West” in modern times.Thirdly,it will focus on Chinese Jesuits' literary activities on collecting and studying the local church history,and analysis their religious and social identity.Those studies indicate that Chinese Jesuits' multiple identities which synthesized religiosity,secularity and technicality forced them participating in the process of Sino-Western cultural interaction in modern times,and deeply influenced the shaping of Chinese Catholics' self-identity.Chapter Six is the conclusion of this dissertation.Firstly,from the perspective of the indigenization of Catholic,it will summarize the overall characteristics of this group from the following four angles: internationality and locality,religiosity and secularity,nationality and contemporaneity,historicity and continuity,then analysis their historical roles and limitations.Secondly,it will focus on their cultural identity and its influences.The overall characteristics and cultural identity of Chinese Jesuits are important factors to understand how their intermediary roles were reflected in Chinese society during the late Qing period,especially in Kiangnan area.In conclusion,the development of Chinese Jesuits in the Jiangnan area during the late Qing China was also the result of the interaction between Catholicism and colonial forces in modern China.However,their national consciousness and cultural identity which were different from western missionaries,had profoundly affected Chinese Catholics' religious life,also to some extent eased the conflicts between the Catholic Church and Chinese society.Nevertheless,their historical limitations made this group could only actively or passively adapt to the development trends of Chinese society,and the social impacts and historical roles they played were mostly limited in the internal of Chinese Catholicism. |
PDF Full Text Request