THE MEMORY PALACE OF MATTEO RICCI ALSO BY JONATHAN D. SPENCE ts’ao yin and the k’ang-hsi emperor: BONDSERVANT AND MASTER TO CHANGE CHINA: WESTERN ADVISERS IN CHINA, 1620 TO I960 EMPEROR OF CHINA: SELF-PORTRAIT OF K*ANG-HSI THE DEATH OF WOMAN WANG THE GATE OF HEAVENLY PEACE: THE CHINESE AND THEIR REVOLUTION, 1895-1980 THE MEMORY PALACE OF MATTEO RICCI JONATHAN D. SPENCE f aber and faber LONDON BOSTON First published in the USA in 1984 by Viking Penguin Inc., New York Published simultaneously in Canada First published in Great Britain in 1985 by Faber and Faber Limited 3 Queen Square London WON 3AU Printed in Great Britain by Butler & Tanner Ltd, Frome All rights reserved Copyright © The Jonathan D. Spence Children’s Trust, 1983,1984,1985 Maps by David Lindroth Calligraphy by Wang Fang-yu and Wang Sum Wai A portion of this book appeared originally in the Yale Review . under the title “Ricci”. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Spence, Jonathan D. The memory palace of Matteo Ricci. 1. Ricci, Matteo 2. Missionaries— China—Biography 3. Missionaries— Italy—Biography 266'2’0924 BV3427.R46 ISBN 0-571-13239-1 FOR HELEN CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix MATTEO RICCI.* A CHRONOLOGY xiii ONE BUILDING THE PALACE 1 TWO THE FIRST IMAGE: THE WARRIORS 24 THREE THE FIRST PICTURE: THE APOSTLE IN THE WAVES 59 vii CONTENTS FOUR THE SECOND IMAGE: THE HUIHUI 93 FIVE THE SECOND PICTURE: THE ROAD TO EMMAUS 128 SIX THE THIRD IMAGE: PROFIT AND HARVEST 162 SEVEN THE THIRD PICTURE: THE MEN OF SODOM 201 EIGHT THE FOURTH IMAGE: THE FOURTH PICTURE 232 NINE INSIDE THE PALACE 266 ABBREVIATIONS 269 NOTES 270 BIBLIOGRAPHY 319 INDEX 339 Illustrations appear on pages 23, 61, 94, 129,163, 202, 263t 264. Maps appear on pages xv andxvi. viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS owe thanks to many people for helping me with this book. I badgered numerous members of the Yale history department, at some time or other, with requests for information, and they all responded cheerfully and helpfully. Without my naming them all individually, I hope they will accept this collective mention of grati­ tude. The same was true for those in the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale, where the first draft was written. I would like to thank all the fellows there for their guidance and encouragement. Among the scores of people from other departments at Yale who also helped with advice, I am especially grateful to Herbert Marks, Wayne Meeks and Thomas Greene for making what turned out to be crucial suggestions at the right times. For helping me track down Ricci’s four prints, I am grateful to Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann and Jennifer Kilian, as well as to the staff of the Department of Prints and Photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, under whose guidance I at last held two of the originals in my hands. Leo Steinberg gave help with interpretations. Charles Boxer, at a memora­ ble luncheon, charted my course for Goa and Macao. IX ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would also like to acknowledge the constant help of the staff in the Beinecke Rare Book Library, the Divinity School Library, the Art Li­ brary, and the Sterling Memorial Library, all at Yale. My thanks, too, to those who provided copies of rare materials from Berkeley, Chicago, Cornell, and Harvard, from Cambridge University Library, and from the Biblioteca Comunale at Macerata, where Aldo Adversi and Piero Corradini were of key assistance. At the China Jesuit History Project in Los Gatos, where I spent a val­ uable week early in 1983, kind hospitality was offered by the rector, Fa­ ther Joseph Costa, S.J., and the librarian, Father Carrol O’Sullivan, S.J. Theodore Foss and Brother Michael Grace in Chicago, as well as the Jesuit fathers George Ganss, Christopher Spalatin, Peter Hu, and Wil­ liam Spohn all gave me useful advice, and so—repeatedly and gra­ ciously—did Father Edward Malatesta, S.J. For help with translations from Portuguese, Italian, Latin and Chi­ nese, I particularly thank Carla Frcccero, Gaudia Brodsky, Cheng Pei- kai, K’ang Le, Ch’en Jo-shui, Sylvia YU and YU Ying-shih. Those who struggled in turn to decipher my opaque and troubled drafts were many, but my special thanks to the typists who suffered the most and the longest, Katrin van der Vaart with the first draft and Elna Godbum with the second. The calligraphy for Ricci’s four memory images was written ex­ pressly for this book by Chang Ch’ung-ho, and my thanks to her for her skill and sensitivity. Time to work out the basic scheme of the book and undertake the initial research was provided by a John Simon Gug­ genheim Memorial Fellowship, for which I thank the trustees. Helpful readings of the first draft were offered by Michael Cooke, Father Mala­ testa, S.J., and Jeanne Bloom, and of the second by Harold Bloom, Robert Fitzgerald, Hans Frei, and John Hollander, to all of whom my thanks. Elisabeth Sifton, as twice before, provided the carefiil reading of everything at all stages which encouraged me to keep trying. I am happy to have the book appear under her imprint. x