Research On Huang Bolu's Advocacy And Defense Writings

In the late Qing Dynasty,with the outbreak of the first Opium War,Catholicism ushered in its fourth large-scale spread in China.The Catholic Jesuits also came to China again in the hope of the Chinese believers and re-planned their mission in China.In this process,they cultivated a large number of outstanding Chinese missionaries,which became the backbone of the communication between Chinese and the western culture.Huang Bolu was one of them.Pierre Hoang(1830-1909)was an outstanding Chinese priests in Diocese of Jiangnan in the late Qing dynasty.He won the Julien Awards twice.He is proficient in the writing and translation of Chinese,Latin,English and French.He has written more than 30 kinds of works,covering various fields such as religious theology,Catholic history in China,astronomy and calendar,law,etc.He is versed in both Chinese and western leaning.In recent years,with the increasing collation,translation and publication of the literature of Catholic clergy in China in the late Qing dynasty,Huang Bolu and his writings have already received attention.With the further study of his works,his identity as a sinologist gradually emerged.However,the study of Huang Bolu is still in its infancy,and his theological works haven't received sufficient attention.His writings on apologetics are rich in content and self-contained.On the one hand,they popularized the religious culture of China for missionaries in China,which was helpful for them to resolve the cultural conflicts encountered in missionary work and solved the difficult problem of localization of Catholicism.On the other hand,it provided textual help for people to learn about the complex Chinese religious system,so as to break their sightless faith in the deities,and cleared the religious barriers for the naturalization of Catholic faith.This article is mainly divided into the following four chapters:The first chapter is introduction.It mainly introduce the purpose and significance of the topic selection,and tease out the current research of Huang Bolu at home and abroad.On the basis of previous studies,combined with Huang's works,I have determined my own research direction,innovation,research ideas and methods.The second chapter explores Huang Bolu's multiple identities.Firstly,through teasing out historical materials,the author deduced and judged whether Huang was "Secular Priest" or " Jesuit".Since Huang Bolu's academic activities always fell into Jesuit's tradition,this research is really necessary.Then,the natural science research achievements of Huang were sorted out,and the historical background of jesuits cultivating academic clergy in China was combined to identify the source of his identity as a Sinologist.The third chapter studies Huang Bolu's religious thoughts through close reading and analysis of the text.The content of his religious theology can be divided into apologetics and argumentation.Apologetics is to expound the principles of Catholicism,construct the legitimacy of Catholicism so that the world can cognize the real God.To argue is to criticize China's native culture.Firstly,he repelled Buddhism and Taoism,selectively criticized Confucianism,in order to finally replace Confucianism.Then,criticism of Chinese popular religion is the focus of Huang Bolu's religious works.As a pioneer in the systematic criticism of Chinese popular religion in the late Qing dynasty,he seeked the origin of folk deities and activities through ancient texts,and used natural rationality to deduce the absurdity of the existence of folk deities in myths,legends and literature.As a native Catholic who was familiar with Chinese traditional religious culture,he had something to learn from in his criticism methods and contents.But he always had stubborn attitude of Christian Centralism and constantly regarded Chinese popular religion as superstition.It provides a model to reflect on how to view Chinese popular religion objectively.The fourth chapter explores the ideological origin of Huang Bolu's religious and theological writings and its influence on related studies of missionaries in China at the same time.In dealing with Confucianism,Buddhism and Taoism,he adopted the strategy of "supplementing Confucianism and suppressing Buddhism" and interpreted the Catholic doctrine and important concepts,which continued the apologetic writings of Catholics in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties.At the same time,his apologetic works provided a great deal of literature supplement to the great work of Henri Doré,Researches into Chinese Superstition,which promoted Henri's systematic study of Chinese folk culture.Henri drew on a large number of Huang's literature and critical methods,which had even led to long-term plagiarism suspicion in academic circles.This article aims to response this controversy through textual study,and to discusses how Henri further studied and thought about the native religious culturebased on Huang's works.