Between Reason and Typology: Strategies for Evangelising China in the Writings of Antonio Possevino (1533–1611) & Michele Ruggieri (1543–1607)

Abstract

Abstract The accommodation of Confucianism articulated by Matteo Ricci (1552–1610) reflected a Neoscholastic approach in which rational agreement was the primary hinge of interreligious engagement. Ricci’s rationalism, however, was somewhat atypical among Jesuits of the late sixteenth century who often made overtures towards typology to explain the cultural and religious phenomena encountered in their missionary activities in East Asia and the New World. This article focuses on the writings of two Jesuits, the encyclopedist Antonio Possevino (1533–1611) and the China missionary Michele Ruggieri (1533–1611), who collaborated on the first European-language publication to include an extract of the Confucian corpus. It examines how Possevino adapts the manuscripts on China that Ruggieri provided him while in Rome in the early 1590s, and the tensions between the scholastic approach to evangelisation proposed in earlier chapters of the Bibliotheca selecta and the more extravagant typological strategies articulated in Ruggieri’s original manuscripts.