Quick Answer: What Was the Chinese Rites Controversy?
The Chinese Rites Controversy (中国礼仪之争, Zhōngguó lǐyí zhī zhēng) was a dispute over whether Chinese Catholics could take part in ceremonies honoring ancestors and Confucius (孔子, Kǒngzǐ), and which Chinese terms could name the Christian God. It began with the Catholic missions of the late Ming and drew in both the papacy and the Qing court. [1][2][3][7]
- Practice: Some missionaries treated the rites as family or civic duties. Others judged them incompatible with Catholic worship.
- Rulings: Rome restricted the rites and Qing rulers restricted missionary activity.
- Later change: In 1939 the Church permitted certain gestures and ceremonies understood as civil honors. [1][2][5][6]
The Church’s rules for Catholics and the Qing government’s rules for missionaries came from different authorities. [1][5]
A bow before a tablet could express respect for a parent or a teacher. Missionaries also asked what it implied about the dead and about worship. The controversy intensified when local answers to those questions became rules issued in Rome and Beijing.
Why the Same Rites Meant Different Things
The Jesuit Matteo Ricci (利玛窦, Lì Mǎdòu) allowed some observances that he saw as compatible with conversion. The broader tradition of Chinese ancestral rites included duties within families. Ceremonies honoring Confucius could also express respect for learning and public order. Critics, including Dominican and Franciscan missionaries, saw certain acts as incompatible with Catholic worship. The same gesture could be read as courtesy, a duty to the dead or an act of worship. [1][2][3][7]
The controversy extended to names for God. Ricci accepted Tian (天, Tiān, Heaven), Shangdi (上帝, Shàngdì, Supreme Sovereign), and Tianzhu (天主, Tiānzhǔ, Lord of Heaven). The first two terms had long histories in Chinese texts. Ricci’s opponents questioned whether those older uses could refer to the same being Catholics meant. For Ricci and some later Jesuits, classical usage helped make the case that Chinese people had once known a supreme deity. Their critics questioned that interpretation. [1][7]
Chinese Catholics made arguments of their own. The scholar Yan Mo (严谟, Yán Mó) drew on Confucian texts to argue that ancestral rites expressed filial duty and held a place in family life that practices such as praying the rosary or giving alms could not take over. His case treated the rites as valuable in their own right. [2]
How the Dispute Reached the Kangxi Court
The Kangxi emperor (康熙帝, Kāngxī dì) issued an edict of tolerance in 1692. The next year Charles Maigrot, the Catholic vicar apostolic responsible for Fujian, prohibited converts in his jurisdiction from observing ancestral and Confucian rites. A decision made for one region became part of a wider dispute as church officials carried the case to Rome. [1][3]
The papal envoy Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon met Kangxi during his mission in 1705–1706. The Jesuit Kilian Stumpf recorded meetings and documents in the Acta Pekinensia. Stumpf served as the legation’s notary and defended the Jesuit mission’s work. His chronicle is both a record of the encounter and an argument about how it should be understood. He describes Kangxi questioning whether Maigrot knew enough about Chinese books and historical practice to judge the rites. [1][4]
In 1707 Tournon issued an edict at Nanjing condemning accommodation of the disputed rites and terms. From around the same time the Qing court required a residence permit for foreign missionaries who wished to work in China. Rome could rule on Catholic practice. The emperor could decide whether missionaries were permitted to remain and work. [1]
What Rome Prohibited and How Qing Policy Changed
Clement XI reinforced Rome’s 1704 ruling in the 1715 constitution Ex illa die. It prohibited the contested rites and rejected Tian and Shangdi as names for the Christian God. A second papal envoy, Carlo Ambrogio Mezzabarba, failed to reach agreement with Kangxi. In 1721 he granted limited permissions that some missionaries read as room to continue their earlier practice. Benedict XIV annulled those permissions and reaffirmed the restrictions in Ex quo singulari in 1742, requiring an oath from missionaries. [1][3][6]
The Qing government acted through its own officials and decrees. Under the Yongzheng emperor (雍正帝, Yōngzhèng dì), the government proscribed Christianity in 1724 and expelled missionaries who were outside court service. Some specialists continued to work in Beijing, including at the imperial astronomy bureau. Court employment and permission to run a mission were separate matters. [3][5]
What Changed in 1939
The 1939 instruction Plane compertum est said that some ceremonies had acquired a civil meaning. It allowed Catholics to attend official honors to Confucius, and permitted bows and other civil signs of respect before the dead, their images or named tablets. It also dispensed priests from the oath on the rites. The instruction kept earlier provisions where they had not been superseded, including the rule against reopening debate over the rites. [6]
The instruction’s reasoning turned on what gestures meant in its own time. By asking how public and family gestures were understood in 1939, the instruction could permit particular civil observances without passing judgment on their meaning in Ricci’s time. [1][6]
FAQs About the Chinese Rites Controversy
Was the controversy only about honoring ancestors?
It also covered ceremonies honoring Confucius and the use of Chinese terms such as Tian and Shangdi for the Christian God. [1][2]
Did the Qing restrictions end all Jesuit work in China?
Some Jesuits remained in imperial service. The 1724 expulsion fell on missionaries outside the court, while some technical and artistic specialists continued to serve the emperor. [5]
Did Rome later permit Catholics to take part in Chinese rites?
Yes, in specified civil settings. The 1939 instruction permitted certain honors to Confucius and civil signs of respect for the dead, and removed the missionaries’ oath on the rites. [6]
Sumber
[1] Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh. Rethinking the Rites Controversy: Kilian Stumpf’s Acta Pekinensia and the Historical Dimensions of a Religious Quarrel
[2] Xueying Wang. The Ancient Rites of China: Yan Mo on Ancestral Rites during the Chinese Rites Controversy
[3] Columbia University, Asia for Educators. Prelude to the 19th Century: Jesuit Missionaries in China and the Rites Controversy
[4] Kilian Stumpf, edited by Paul Rule and Claudia von Collani. The Acta Pekinensia or Historical Records of the Maillard de Tournon Legation
[5] Benoît Vermander. Jesuits and China
[6] Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith. Plane compertum est, December 8, 1939, in Acta Apostolicae Sedis 32 (1940), pp. 24–26
[7] Nicolas Standaert. Theology in China ca. 1582–ca. 1688