The human body as a universe: Understanding heaven by visualization and sensibility in Jesuit cartography in China

Catholic Historical Review

Volumn 93, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 517-552

  Chen, Hui Hung ^a  

^a NATIONAL TAIWAN UNIVERSITY   (Taiwan)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60950130032     PISSN: 00088080     EISSN: 15340708     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/cat.2007.0236     Document Type: Review

References (90)

1. Giulio Aleni, Wanguo tu xiaoyin (Little Preface of the Wanguo tu). It only appears in an edition of Aleni's Wanguo quantu in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV), call number Barberini Oriente 151 (1a).
2. A modern facsimile of this map is provided by Howard L. Goodman, "Paper Obelisks: East Asia in the Vatican Vaults," in Rome Reborn: The Vatican Library and Renaissance Culture, ed. Anthony Grafton (Washington, 1993), p. 259.
3. This term is appropriated from Donald Lach's term "visual image of Asia's configuration" of European printed maps, see his work Asia in the Making of Europe, vol. 1, bk. 1 (Chicago, 1965), p. 218.
4. For instance, the recently comprehensive reference to the Jesuits or Christianity in China put the topic "cartography" under the category of "science and technology," separate from the category of "arts, crafts, and language." See Nicolas Standaert, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China, Volume One, (635-1800) (Leiden, 2001), pp. 752, 809.
5. For a review of these scholarly reflections about cartography, see David Woodward's introduction to the book edited by him, Art and Cartography - Six Historical Essays (Chicago, 1987), pp. 1-9.
6. The term "a graphic mode of expression" comes from Sergio Bosticco, "Cosmology and Cartography," in Encyclopedia of World Art, vol. 3 (New York, 1960), p. 836; for the term "a visual image of geographical configuration," please see note 2 above.
7. Marcia Kupfer, "Medieval World Maps: Embedded Images, Interpretive Frames," Word and Image 10 (July-September, 1994), 262.
8. Pasquale M. d'Elia, Fonti Ricciane: Documenti originali concernenti Matteo Ricci a la storia delle prime relazioni tra l'Europa e la Cina (1579-1615). Storia dell'introduzione del Cristianesimo in Cina scritta da Matteo Ricci, 3 vols. (Rome, 1942-1949), I, p. 207.
9. Nicolas Standaert, "The Classification of Sciences and the Jesuit Mission in Late Ming China," in Linked Faiths: Essays on Chinese Religions & Traditional Culture in Honour of Kristofer Schipper, ed. Jan A. M. De Meyer and Peter M. Engelfriet (Leiden, 2000), pp. 287-317.
10. For these Jesuit mathematical courses, see Giuseppe Cosentino, "Le Matematiche nella «Ratio Studiorum» della Compagnia di Gesù," in Miscellanea storica ligure, vol. 2 (Genoa, 1970), pp. 171-213;
11. also refer to Allan P. Farrell, S. J., trans., The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum of 1599 (Washington, D. C., 1970).
12. D'Elia, Fonti Ricciane, II, pp. 90, 114, 123;
13. Nicolas Trigault (1577-1628), China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journal of Matthew Ricci: 1583-1610, trans. Louis J. Gallagher (New York, 1953), p. 364.
14. Pasquale D'Elia, trans. and anno., Il Mappamondo Cinese del P. Matteo Ricci S.I. (Vatican City, 1938), p. 169;
15. D'Elia, Fonti Ricciane, I, p. 207.
16. About the history of the printing of Ricci's world maps, the following studies are still seen as of the most comprehensive: Hung Weiliang, "Kao Limadou de shijie ditu" (On the World Map of Matteo Ricci), Yu gong ban yue kan (The Chinese Historical Geography) 5 (1936), 2-5;
17. Fang Hao, Li zhizao yanjiu (On Li Zhizao) (Taipei, 1966), pp. 78-79;
18. Cao Wanru et al., "Zhongguo xiancun limadou shijie ditu de yanjiu" (Study of the World Map of Matteo Ricci Extant in China), Wenwu 12 (1983), 57-70. At least sixteen copies and editions of Ricci's mappamundi dated from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are extant in Europe, China, Taiwan, and Japan.
19. In addition to D'Elia's Il Mappamondo, the earlier reprint and annotation of the 1602 version at the BAV, the latest full modern facsimile of this edition, with a complete enlargement of every division of the map, was published from the one housed in the Library of the Miyagi Prefecture, see Li Madou (Matteo Ricci), ed., Li madou kunyu wanguo quantu (Universal Map of the World and Countries of Matteo Ricci) (Tokyo, 1996).
20. Trigault, China in the Sixteenth Century, p. 301;
21. Hung, "Kao Limadou," p. 7.
22. For the Guang yu tu's influence on Ricci's geographical work in Chinese, see Goodman, "Paper Obelisks," p. 257.
23. Zhang Zhejia, "Mingdai fangzhi de ditu" (The Maps in the Local Gazetteers of the Ming Dynasty), in Jindai zhongguo de shijue biaoshu yu wenhua goutu (The Visual Representations and Cultural Mappings in Early Modern China), ed. Huang Kewu (Taipei, 2003), pp. 184-207.
24. One edition of the Zhi fang wai ji, including Aleni's world map, is reproduced in its modern facsimile, see Giulio Aleni, Zhi fang wai (Descriptions of Foreign Lands), in Congshu jicheng chubian (The First Compilation of Various Books) (Shanghai, 1936). Aleni mentioning Pantoja is on the preface's page 1 of this facsimile.
25. Here the size of the Wanguo quantu is taken from Takato Tokio's catalogue for the edition housed in BAV, call number Barberini Oriente 151 (1a) and (1b) (two copies), see P. Pelliot, Inventaire sommaire des manuscrits et imprimés chinois de la Bibliothèque Vaticane, ed. Takata Tokio (Kyoto, 1995). The one with the number 151 (1a) has a single image alone, above a preface written by Aleni and the colored Wanguo quantu below. That of 151 (1b) is also a single yet uncolored sheet with the Wanguo quantu above and the Beiyu ditu (Northern Polar Hemisphere Map) and Nanyu ditu (Southern Polar Hemisphere Map) below. This one is identified as the same as the other extant copies of this work housed in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan, and in the Biblioteca nazionale centrale di Roma, Rome (call number 72C494 1&2).
26. For the one in Ambrosiana, the following catalogue wrongly attributed it to Ricci: Paolo Revelli, I Codici Ambrosiani di contenuto geografico, vol. 1 of Fontes Ambrosiani (Milano, 1929), p. 188. The information in this catalogue offers the similar measurement (49.4 cm × 24.3 cm) as that of BAVs. The old attribution could be seen as a result of the prominence of Ricci's role in translating the European cartographical mode into Chinese for the traditional European scholarship. As for Ricci's map, the measuring information also comes from Takata's catalogue for the edition in BAV, call number Barberini Oriente 150 (1-6). This one serves as the subject of D'Elia's Il Mappamondo.
27. There are six copies of the Kunyu quantu known at present. See the most recent research of Paolo de Troia and Ann Heirman, "The World-Map of Father Franceso Sambiasi (1582-1649)" (paper presented at the XVth Biennial Conference of the European Association of Chinese Studies (EACS), University of Heidelberg, Germany, August 25-29, 2004).
28. For the above information about Verbiest's Kunyu quantu, see Lin Tongyang, "Ferdinand Verbiest's Contribution to Chinese Geography and Cartography," in Ferdinand Verbiest: Jesuit Missionary, Scientist, Engineer and Diplomat, ed. John W. Witek (Nettetal, 1994), pp. 136-138;
29. his "Nanhuairen de shijie ditu - kunyu quantu" (Ferdinand Verbiest's World Map - Kunyu quantu), Donghai daxue lishi xuebao (Bulletin of the Graduate Institute of History and the Department of History Tunghai University) 5 (1982), 69-84;
30. Christine Vertente, "Nan Huai-Jen's Maps of the World," in Succès et échecs de la rencontre Chine et Occident, du XVIe au XXe siècle (San Francisco, 1993), pp. 257-263;
31. Monique Cohen and Nathalie Monnet, Impressions de Chine (Paris, 1992), pp. 126-127. However, there is one copy or edition of Verbiest's Kunyu quantu never mentioned by the above three articles, i. e., the one hanging on a side wall of the public entry lobby of BAV, entitled Mappamonde Terreste (1674 ed.), in contrast to Johann Adam Schall von Bell's Planisfero Celeste (1634 ed.) on the opposite wall. Both works do not have shelf numbers, so they are not entered in any of the library's catalogues.
32. Steven J. Harris, "Mapping Jesuit Science: The Role of Travel in the Geography of Knowledge," in The Jesuits: Cultures, Sciences, and the Arts 1540-1773, ed. John W. O'Malley, S.J., et al. (Toronto, 1999), p. 214. The following discussion about the "local" and "distributed" characters of scientific knowledge, the Jesuit geographical network, and the corporate or organized travels all refer to Harris's theoretical framework, see esp. pp. 214-216. This theory intends to answer why the Society of Jesus published a great amount of works on geography and natural science.
33. For the Jesuits' introducing new knowledge of China to Europe and the ensuing new style of maps of Asia in Europe, see Boleslaw Szcześniak, "The Seventeenth Century Maps of China: An Inquiry into the Compilations of European Cartographers," Imago Mundi 13 (1956), 116-136;
34. Theodore N. Foss, "A Western Interpretation of China: Jesuit Cartography," in East Meets West: The Jesuits in China, 1582-1773, ed. Charles E. Ronan and Bonnie B. C. Oh (Chicago, 1988), pp. 209-251;
35. the same author as above, "Cartography," in Standaert, Handbook of Christianity in China, pp. 752-770.
36. D'Elia, Fonti Ricciane, II, p. 131.
37. Samuel Y. Edgerton, Jr., "From Mental Matrix to Mappamundi to Christian Empire: The Heritage of Ptolemy Cartography in the Renaissance," in Woodward, Art and Cartography, pp. 10-50, and Woodward's introduction in this book, p. 4.
38. John Henderson, "Chinese Cosmographical Thought: The High Intellectual Tradition," in The History of Cartography, ed. J. B. Harley and David Woodward, vol. 2, bk. 2 (Chicago, 1994), pp. 203-213.
39. Zhang, "Mingdai fangzhi," pp. 190-212.
40. Chu Pingyi -, "Kua wenhua zhishi chuanbo de gean yanjiu - mingmo qingchu guanyu diyuan shuo de zhengyi, 1600-1800", 1600-1800 (The Formation of Factual Knowledge in Trans-cultural Scientific Transactions: The Debate over the Sphericity of the Earth in China, 1600-1800), Zhong-yang yanjiuyuan lishi yuyan yanjiusuo jikan (Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology) 69 (1998), 589-670.
41. Paul Rheinbay said that the globe on the title page of the Tianzhu jiangsheng chuxiang jingjie was "depicted according to Asian style," meaning that they were only outlined in Asia. Paul Rheinbay, "Nadal's Religious Iconography Reinterpreted by Aleni for China," in "Scholar from the West:" Giulio Aleni S.J. (1582-1649) and the Dialogue Between Christianity and China, ed. Tiziana Lippiello and Roman Malek (Nettetal, Germany, 1997), p. 330.
42. The illustration shown here is also found in an earlier Jesuit work, Manuel Diaz, Jr., Tian wen lüe (On Astronomy; 1615)
43. see Tianxue chuhan (The First Book Compilation of the "Heavenly Studies"), 6 vols. (Taipei, 1964), V, p. 2704.
44. Although the map has Sambiasi's signature to indicate that he wrote and annotatd it, this text had appeared in another Jesuit work, Sabastino de Ursis, Biao du shuo (On Gnomon) (1614), in Tianxue chuhan, V, pp. 2543-2544.
45. D'Elia, Il Mappamondo, pp. 170-171.
46. Foss, "A Western Interpretation of China," p. 210;
47. Chu, "Kua wenhua zhishi," pp. 596-614.
48. Aleni's Wanguo tu xiaoyin.
49. This preface is the text under the title of the map at the right side of the work. For the texts on Ricci's maps, refer also to Wang Mianhou, "Lun li madou kunyu wangguo quantu han liangyi xuanlan tu shang de xuba tishi" (On the Prefaces and Texts on the Kunyu wanguo quantu and Liangyi xuanlan tu of Matteo Ricci), in Zhongguo gudai ditu ji - ming dai (A Compilation of Chinese Ancient Maps - Ming Dynasty), ed. Cao Wanru et al. (Beijing, 1994), pp. 107-111.
50. Giulio Aleni, Kou duo ri cha (Daily Account of the Vocal Assertion), in Nicolas Standaert and Adrian Dudink, eds.,: Chinese Christian Texts from the Roman Archives of the Society of Jesus, 12 vols. (Taipei, 2002), VII, pp. 42-43.
51. Regarding the tools the Jesuits brought to China for time and spatial measurement, see Catherine Jami, "Western Devices for Measuring Time and Space: Clocks and Euclidian Geometry in Late Ming and Ch'ing China," in Time and Space in Chinese Culture, ed. Chun-Chieh Huang and Erik Zürcher (Leiden, 1995), pp. 169-200.
52. Cited by Frank Lestringant, Mapping the Renaissance World: The Geographical Imagination in the Age of Discovery, trans. David Fausett (Berkeley, 1994), p. 6. The "he" in the quotation is his cousin who, in Lestringant's terms, "guided his reading from the planisphere to the Psalms." The original source of the remark is Richard Hakluyt, The Principall Navigations, Voiages, and Discoveries of the English Nation, Made by Sea or Over Land. . (London, 1589), fol. 2r.
53. Lestringant, Mapping the Renaissance World, pp. 1-11.
54. Both quotations concerning Venetian mapping case studies are from Denis Cosgrove, "Mapping New Worlds: Culture and Cartography in Sixteenth-Century Venice," Imago Mundi 49 (1992), 75. Here the author is talking about and citing Fra Luca Pacioli's reference to the central positions of number, geometry, and proportion in measuring all things of the universe.
55. Willem D. Hackmann, "Natural Philosophical Textbook Illustrations 1600-1800," in Non-Verbal Communication in Science Prior to 1900, ed. Renato G. Mazzolini (Florence, 1993), pp. 173-174.
56. George E. Ganss, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius - A Translation and Commentary (St. Louis, 1992), p. 150.
57. Jacques Gernet, China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Cultures (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 146-150;
58. Erik Zürcher, "Confucian and Christian Religiosity in Late Ming China," The Catholic Historical Review 83 (October, 1997), 625-630.
59. For this concept in the elaboration of Daoism, see Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 2, History of Scientific Thought (Cambridge, 1956), pp. 153-154.
60. Matteo Ricci, Tianzhu shiyi (The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven), in Tianxue chuhan, I, pp. 429-449.
61. João da Rocha, Tianzhu shengjiao qimeng (Catechism for Catholicism) and Song nian zhu gui cheng (Method for Reciting the Rosary) (ARSI, JapSin I, 43), fol. 1r.
62. A modern facsimile of this work has been published, see Standaert and Dudink, Chinese Christian Texts, I, pp. 503-515, 515-574; the above folio 1r is on page 515;
63. Francesco Sambiasi, Ling yan li shao (Treatise on Anima), in Tianxue chuhan, II, pp. 1127-1268.
64. Diego de Pantoja, Pangzi yi quan (The Posthumous Work of Pantoja), in Standaert and Dudink, Chinese Christian Texts, II, p. 109;
65. Alfonso Vagnoni, Jiaoyao jie lüe (Brief Explanations of the Catholic Essentials), in Standaert and Dudink, Chinese Christian Texts, I, pp. 301-306;
66. Giulio Aleni, Xingxue cushu (On Human Nature, Aleni's preface dated in 1623), in Standaert and Dudink, Chinese Christian Texts, VI, pp. 104-108;
67. Giulio Aleni, Sanshan lunxue ji (Account of Discussing Catholic Doctrine at Sanshan (Fuzhou)), in Tianzhujiao dongchuan wenxian xubian (Literature of Catholicism in the East, Second Series), 3 vols. (Taipei, 1966), I, pp. 469-477;
68. Giulio Aleni, Dizui zhenggui (Formal Rule and Statement of the Penitential Sacrament), in Standaert and Dudink, Chinese Christian Texts, IV, p. 360.
69. Zürcher, "Confucian and Christian Religiosity," p. 626.
70. As for the correlative thought in China, refer to Du Zhengsheng, "Xingti, jingqi yu hunpo - zhongguo chuantong dui ren renshi de xingcheng" (Body, Spirit and Soul - The Formation of the Knowledge of Humans in Chinese Traditions), Xin shixue (New History) 2 (3): 56-61 (September 1991);
71. John B. Henderson, The Development and Decline of Chinese Cosmology (New York, 1984).
72. About Zhuangzi's writings and philosophy, see Young-bae Song, "Dongfang de xiangguan xing siwei moshi nan dui youjiti shengming de lijie - yi Zhuangzi nan zhongyi de youjiti shengming yuanli wei zhongxin" (The Eastern Thinking Method of Relativity and the Comprehension of the Organic Being - the Principles of the Organic Being in Zhuangzi and Chinese Medicine), (paper presented at the International Meeting of the Formation of the Cosmic Order in Early Modern East Asia, Center for the Study of East Asian Civilizations, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, August 20-21, 2004).
73. For this concept of the universe in Neo-Confucianism, see Wu Zhan-liang, "Yangming de qihua shijieguan yu qi hexin sixiang xilun" (The Qi Worldview of [Wang] Yangming), (paper presented at the International Conference on the Development of the Worldviews in Early Modern East Asia, Center for the Study of East Asian Civilizations, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, August 5-6, 2005).
74. Ganss, The Spiritual Exercises, pp. 96-98, 186.
75. The quotation comes from the Jiaoyao jie lüe. The Jiaoyao jie lüe and the Shengjing yue lu were reprinted in full in the first volume of Standaert's and Dudink's Chinese Christian Texts. The texts discussing the five senses of the body are separately seen in the following pages, 110, 301-303 (the quotation on p. 301).
76. Albert Chan attributed the Shengjing yue lu to Ricci, composed after 1605, see Albert Chan, Chinese Books and Documents in the Jesuit Archives in Rome - A Descriptive Catalogue (Armonk, New York, 2002), p. 106.
77. For the Aristotelian theory of the human sense in theology, a recent discussion on this issue pertained to the Jesuit Ignatius de Loyola, is Jeffrey Chipps Smith, Sensuous Worship: Jesuits and the Art of the Early Catholic Reformation in Germany (Princeton, 2002), pp. 35-40.
78. Joseph Needham, Chinese Astronomy and the Jesuit Mission: An Encounter of Cultures (London, 1958), p. 1.
79. The contents of this booklet are also part of Needham's Science and Civilization in China, vol. 3 (Cambridge, 1959).
80. Vagnoni, Jiaoyao jie lüe, p. 304.
81. see individually, Ricci, Tianzhu shiyi, pp. 574-577;
82. Sambiasi, Ling yan li shao, pp. 1154-1211;
83. Aleni, Xingxue cushu, pp. 283-302.
84. Aleni, Kou duo ri chao, pp. 397-398.
85. Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago, 1966), p. 32.
86. In Aleni's term, memory housed in the brain is called she ji. The term ji han is used for memory of the heart. This theory conforms to the relevant historical discourse in fifteenth-century Europe that is stated by Paul Saenger as follows: "In the fifteenth century, cognitive function was thought to be divided between the brain, which according to Galen was the locus of sense and memory, and the heart, which according to the Bible, Aristotle, and numerous Latin patristic authorities was the intangible seat of the rational soul," see Paul Saenger, "Books of Hours and the Reading Habits of the Later Middle Ages," in The Culture of Print - Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, ed. Roger Chartier, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Princeton, 1987), p. 145.
87. This booklet forms the skeleton of Jonathan Spence's well-known book, The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci (New York, 1985).
88. Matteo Ricci, Xiguo Jifa (Western Mnemonics), in Tianzhujiao dongchuan wenxian (Literature of Catholicism in the East), 3rd ed. (Taipei, 1997), pp. 1-70.
89. As for the difference in the relationship between words and images in China and Europe, see Wen C. Fong, "Why Chinese Painting Is History," The Art Bulletin 85 (June, 2003), 259 (for both quotations);
90. David Carrier, "Meditations on a Scroll, or the Roots of Chinese Artistic Form," Word and Image 18 (January-March, 2002), 50.