Matteo Ricci

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Matteo Ricci (left) and Xu Guangqi(徐光啟) (right) in the Chinese edition of Euclid's Elements (幾何原本).

Map of the Far East by Matteo Ricci in 1602.

Image:Ricciportrait.jpg Matteo Ricci (October 6 1552 - May 11 1610) (Chinese: 利瑪竇, pinyin: Lì Mǎdòu, courtesy name:西泰 Xītài) was an Italian Jesuit priest.

[edit] Biography

Born in 1552 in Macerata, then part of the Papal States, Ricci started learning theology and law in a Roman Jesuits' school. In 1577, he filed an application to be a member of a Missionary to India, and his journey began in March 1578 from Lisbon, Portugal. He arrived in Goa, a Portuguese Colony, in September 1578, and four years later he was dispatched to China.

In 1582, he started learning the Chinese language and customs in Macao, a Portuguese trading post in Southern China, and became a rarely seen Western scholar who mastered Chinese classical script. He moved to Beijing in 1601, where he presented himself at the Imperial court of Wanli.

Not only could he write in ancient Chinese, he was also renowned for his great understanding of Chinese culture. Unlike South Asia, he found that Chinese culture was strongly tied to Confucian values and concluded that Christianity had to be adapted to Chinese culture in order to take root.

In his early life in China, he referred to himself as a Western Monk (西僧), a term relating to Buddhism. He later discovered that Confucian thought was dominant in the Ming dynasty in China. Ricci became the first to translate the Confucian classics into a western language, Latin; in fact "Confucius" was Ricci's own Latinisation. He came to call himself a "Western Confucian" (西儒). The credibility of Confucius helped make Christianity take root.

Ricci also met a Korean emissary to China, Yi Su-gwang. Ricci taught Yi Su-gwang the basic tenets of Catholicism and transmitted western knowledge to him. Ricci gave Yi Su-gwang several books from the west, which became the basis of Yi Su-gwang's later works. Ricci's transmission of western knowledge to Yi Su-gwang influenced and helped shape the foundation of the Silhak movement in Korea.

The following are named after him: Ricci Hall, a dormitory at Hong Kong University, Matteo Ricci College at Seattle Preparatory School and Seattle University, and the Sekolah Katolik Ricci in Indonesia (located in Pancoran, China Town of Jakarta).

[edit] Further reading

Vincent Cronin, The Wise Man from the West: Matteo Ricci and his Mission to China (1955) ISBN 0-00-626749-1
Jonathan D. Spence, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (1985)
"Madness of the Wise : Ricci in China", an article by Simon Leys in his book, The Burning Forest (1983), is an interesting account, and contains a critical review of Spence's book