2020/11/09 by Gianamar Giovannetti-Singh · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Chinese history and philosophy #Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis #Reformation and Early Modern Christianity #Emperor #China #Historiography #History #Beijing #Philosophy #Ancient history #Tian #Religious studies #Archaeology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s1479244320000426
openalex publication_date 2020/11/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
The Chinese rites controversy ( c. 1582–1742) is typically characterized as a religious quarrel between different Catholic orders over whether it was permissible for Chinese converts to observe traditional rites and use the terms tian and shangdi to refer to the Christian God. As such, it is often argued that the conflict was shaped predominantly by the divergent theological attitudes between the rites-supporting Jesuits and their anti-rites opponents towards “accommodation.” By examining the Jesuit missionary Kilian Stumpf's Acta Pekinensia —a detailed chronicle of the papal legate Charles-Thomas Maillard de Tournon's 1705–6 investigation into the controversy in Beijing—this article proposes that ostensibly religious disputes between Catholic orders consisted primarily of disagreements over ancient Chinese history. Stumpf's text shows that missionaries’ understandings of antiquity were constructed through their interpretations of ancient Chinese books and their interactions with the Kangxi Emperor. The article suggests that the historiographical characterization of the controversy as “religious” has its roots in the Vatican suppression of the rites, which served to erase the historical nature of the conflict exposed in the Acta Pekinensia .