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Exchange of learning yet failed encounter : Behind challenges, the Acta Pekinensia, an unpublished manuscript
Camus, Yves
Camus, Yves
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Abstract
Towards the end of the European Renaissance period, a new era of cultural encounter opened in China as in Europe. In the West, despite religious and cultural crises, it was a time of internal reorganisation and global explorations. In the midst of those trouble times, the person of Matteo Ricci (1552-1610) has been seen as an initiator. Attention will first be paid to analyse the reasons for such a role and what gave Ricci so great a success: actually, what did he achieve in the “exchange of learning” at the time, be it in the philosophic or scientific fields? But soon after his death and for no less than a century (1610-1710), Matteo Ricci’s legacy has generated a large array of disputed interpretations, not first or only in the Chinese Empire for his so called “accommodative” approach to Chinese cultural and spiritual traditions, but all the more so in Europe. Ricci’s successors and fellow Jesuits, through their many letters from China and scholarly publications in Europe, did their best in defending their cause. With the European intelligentsia they shared some of the “Chinese learning” they had explored. But they had not foreseen that such a sharing and their humanistic education and culture were fostering at their disadvantage the “enlightenment spirit” of the European political establishment. That was the background of the so called Chinese Rites Controversy in Europe. To quench the many disputes, the Roman ecclesiastical authorities finally sent the Maillard de Tournon legation (1705-1710) to China as if it were to build too late “a bridge too far” to be solid. The proceedings of the legation and of its failure are narrated in the manuscript called Acta Pekinensia, soon to be published in the first English annotated translation. In this context of “exchange of learning”, details on the manuscript and its first publication project will be given. Reflections on the challenges hidden in such an exchange and the failed cultural encounter that followed will finally be proposed which could give some hints on the global tasks ahead.
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The IVth World Conference on Sinology 2014 “The Exchange of Learning between ‘East’ and ‘West’: 400 Years in Retrospect” 6-7 September 2014, Beijing
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Conference paper/presentation
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2014
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Macau Ricci Institute