The harvest of the vine: The Jesuit missionary enterprise in China, 1579--1710 (Portugal)

This dissertation examines the Jesuit missionary enterprise in China from its inception in 1579 until its maximum extension at the beginning of the eighteenth century. It seeks to account for the factors that enabled a handful of Europeans—no more than 35 at one time—to scale formidable cultural barriers to create a Chinese Church with more than 200,000 adherents in little more than a century. On the basis of extensive research in little used archival collections in Lisbon and Rome, this study presents a new vision of the Society of Jesus' Vice-Province of China that eschews the traditional themes of its historiography: the well-known “accommodation” policy, the Chinese Rites Controversy, or the science of the Peking Jesuits. Focusing instead on the mission's practical religious dimensions, it reveals Jesuits' motivations, challenges, and strategies when faced with their missionary task. It also describes many of the responses they provoked in their efforts to bring Christianity to those who were disposed to receive it, whether rich or poor, city-dwellers or peasants.; This dissertation first provides a new chronological narrative of the Jesuits' Chinese endeavor, presenting the growth of a Mission Church centered on the Jiangnan region, with significant Christian communities spread throughout the Ming, and later Qing Empire. Here, the history of the mission reveals a continually expanding enterprise fatally overextended by the very effectiveness of its missionary methods, and whose vitality was sustained by two groups: the missionaries and their Chinese followers. Following the narrative, a set of four chapters discusses the aspects of missionary formation—from their training in standard Jesuit organizational techniques, to their spiritual and pastoral formation, to their systematic study of Chinese language and philosophy—that enabled these men to provide the first impulse to the spread of “the Law of God.” Another set of four chapters then discusses how the missionaries created and structured their Chinese Church, from the techniques of persuasion they used to claim conversions, to the “parish” system they administered through a set of trained Chinese auxiliaries, to the elaborate forms of contemporary Catholic practice they promoted among their devout Christians.