Ming-Qing Documents

Religious and Moral Texts

Christianity

Introduction

The history of Christianity in China is perhaps the one subfield of Chinese history that has received as much, if not more, attention outside of China than within. The reasons for this are obvious. Generally the field tends to divide along confessional lines, the history of Catholicism in China on the one hand, the history of Protestantism on the other.

The first Christians to commence missionary activities in China were the Franciscans. John of Montecorvino (1247-1328) initiated the first mission in China, during the Yuan dynasty. Coming to China in 1294, he was consecrated the first Christian archbishop of Khanbaliq (Beijing) in 1307 and was the only missionary until 1312, when three suffragan bishops and several Franciscan friars were sent to join him. The mission was later aborted during the Yuan-Ming transition, and missionaries did not come to China again until the 16th century, when the Jesuits arrived in Macao soon after the foundation of their order in 1540. The Italian Michele Ruggieri was the first Jesuit to reside briefly in Guangdong, joined in 1582 by Matteo Ricci (Li Madou 利瑪竇), whose diary was translated in Latin and published in Europe by Nicolaus Trigault in 1615 under the title De Christiana Expeditione apud Sinas. An English translation by Louis Gallagher is available: China in the Sixteenth Century: The Journals of Matthew Ricci, 1583-1610 (New York: Random House, 1953). The voluminous literature published by the Jesuits in Western languages forms a field in itself, and is well covered in Wilkinson. Note, however, that the letters of the Jesuits published in Lettres édifiantes were substantially censored for the public. The unvarnished contents of their private correspondence await the researcher willing to visit the archives of the main missionary orders, three of which are in Rome (Jesuits SJ, Franciscans OFM, Dominicans OP, and one in Paris (Missions Etrangeres de Paris, MEP).

In the early 18th century, the Qing emperors launched campaigns to curb missionary activities. The first wave of repression was launched in 1723, during the reign of Yongzheng, starting in Fuan, Fujian and soon spread to other regions in the empire. Qianlong launched another wave of anti-Christian campaign in 1746, which evolved to become empire-wide. Official missionary activities ceased, though Jesuits were still permitted in the court in Beijing and illicit proselytization persisted in the local level with more active involvements of local Chinese priests. Missionary activities gradually restored after the Opium Wars in the mid-nineteenth century. This wave was led primarily by Protestant groups, though Catholics were by no means absent. Again, there are scores of accounts left by these missionaries – who, unlike the earlier Jesuits, lived not at court but primarily in rural China – some published, but many more unpublished and preserved in archives and libraries around the world. A good introduction to the post-1840s missionary activities in China is John Fairbank, ed., The Missionary Enterprise in China and America (Harvard UP, 1974).

 

A general introduction on Christianity in China can be found in the two books below:

Handbook of Christianity in China. Volume One: 635 - 1800. Standaert, Nicolas, ed. Leiden: Brill, 2001.

Handbook of Christianity in China. Volume Two: 1800 - present. Tiedermann, Gary, ed. Leiden: Brill, 2009.

 

For a bibliography of scholarship on Chinese religions in western languages up until 2000, consult the following book series :

Chinese Religion in Western Languages: A Comprehensive and Classified Bibliography of Publications in English, French, and German through 1980. Thompson, Laurence G. comp. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1985.

Chinese Religion: Publications in Western Languages, 1981 through 1990. Thompson, Laurence G. comp., Seaman, Gary ed. Ann Arbor, MI; Los Angeles, CA: Ethnographic Press, Center for Visual Anthropology, University of Southern California, 1993.

Chinese Religions: Publications in Western Language, Vol. 3: 1991 through 1995. Thompson, Laurence G. comp., Seaman, Gary ed. Ann Arbor, MI; Los Angeles, CA: Ethnographic Press, Center for Visual Anthropology, University of Southern California, 1998.

Chinese Religions: Publications in Western Languages. Volume 4, 1996-2000. Seaman,Gary, Thompson, Laurence G., and Song, Zhifang comps., Seaman, Gary, ed. Ann Arbor, MI.: Association for Asian Studies, 2002.

 

For databases on Christianity, consult the ones below:

The Chinese Christian Texts Database (CCT-Database): "a research database of primary and secondary sources concerning the cultural contacts between China and Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (from 1582 to ca. 1840)."

China Historical Christian Database (CHCD): a database that tracks missionary movement as well as the locations of Christian church, school, hospital, orphanage, publishing house, and the like in China from 1550s to 1950s, is forthcoming in 2021. Beta version is currently available. 

Chinese Christian Posters: collects more than 500 posters that were made and published by Christian organizations from late Qing to the Republican period.

[More to come!]

 

Some of the more important reference works relating to missionary activities are below:

Christianity in China: Early Protestant Missionary Writings. Susan Wilson Barnett and John K. Fairbank, eds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985.

The papers of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, which organized the Congregrationalist missions to China, are held in Harvard's Houghton library. The finding aid is available online.

 

Catholic

Bibliotheca Missionum. Robert Streit OMI et al., eds. Aachen: F. Xaverius Missionsverein, 1916-1974.

The most comprehensive bibliography on the Catholic missions from beginning to now. At least five volumes concern the missions in China. Manuscripts, books, and articles are cited. The volumes for the 19th-20th centuries are massive and collect most of the existing literature.

Notices biographiques et bibliographiques sur les Jésuites de l’ancienne mission en Chine, 1552-1772. 2 vols. Louis Pfister. Shanghai, 1932-34; reprinted CMC (Taipei), 1976.

Organized by name, this is probably the best known of the reference works on the pre-19th c. Catholic mission. The Chinese translation contains many emendations: Geng Sheng, Zai Hua Yesu huishi liezhuan ji shumu bubian 在華耶穌會士列傳及書目補編, 2 vols. (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1995).

Bibliography of the Jesuit Mission in China. Erik Zurcher, Nicholas Standaert S.J., and Arianus Dudink. Leiden, 1991.

Contains a selective list of published and unpublished works concerning the first one hundred years of the Jesuit mission (i.e., late Ming and early Qing), including academic works in several

 

Protestant

Christianity in China: A Scholars' Guide to Resources in the Libraries and Archives of the United States. Archie Crouch, et al., ed. Armonk (N.Y.) & London: M.E. Sharpe, 1989.

The guide is organized by a system of hierarchic code numbers: states, cities, institutions, libraries, and repositories in alphabetical order. Material is romanized as it is found in the repository. It has a conversion table of place names in China, a list of serials, a list of oral histories by name, and a list of institutions that have the China Missionaries Oral History Collection. Also has a list of theses arranged by author's name, a subject index, a name index, a repository index, and a bibliography.

A Guide to the Archives and Records of Protestant Christian Missions from the British Isles to China, 1796-1914. Leslie Marchant, ed. Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 1966.

Guide to the Manuscript Collections of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. Robert Benedict. New York, 1990.

This book (and others like it) contain more than just materials on church missionaries. However, once a specific (in this case, Presbyterian) missionary is known to be relevant to a topic at hand, then guides like this one are invaluable for locating possible unpublished manuscripts by the person.

China Mission, Presbyterian Church in the USA: Board of Foreign Missions Correspondence and Reports, 1833–1911. Published in cooperation with the Presbyterian Historical Society, Department of History, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

The records of the Board of Foreign Missions (BFM) of the Presbyterian Church provide invaluable information on social conditions in developing Third World nations. Documenting the church's educational, evangelical, and medical work, these records contain a wealth of correspondence and reports relating to China, Japan, Korea, and many other parts of the world. The vast majority of material is incoming correspondence from the mission field and outgoing correspondence from the board headquarters. Other primary sources include: receipts of sale; inventories of supplies (food, tobacco, sundries, etc.); diary accounts; sermon manuscripts; minutes of board meetings; annual reports on mission work; and personal and field reports, including information on the number of newly organized churches, ordained ministers, members, and average attendance.

The Chinese Recorder Index: A Guide to Christian Missions in Asia, 1867–1941. 2 vols. Kathleen Lodwick comp. Scholarly Resources Publications, 1986.

The Chinese Recorder, a journal issued by the Protestant missionary community in China, appeared almost without interruption for seventy five years. This was the longest run of any English language publication in China. Ecumenical in scope, its purpose was to provide a link between these missionaries, offering news of each other's activities and information that might have impact on their work. As China mission personnel were transferred elsewhere, the journal followed their peregrinations and eventually reported on mission activities throughout Asia, often Catholic as well as Protestant. In addition to being useful as a source for the study of mission history and the role played by Christians and Christianity in Sino Western relations, Chinese Recorder is also one of the few English language sources produced in and commenting on China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Chinese Recorder Index, covering the seventy two volumes of the Chinese Recorder and its predecessor of one year, the Missionary Recorder, comprises three main, separate indexes: Persons (which includes every individual mentioned at least four times over the run of the journal), Missions/Organizations, and Subjects. Following these indexes are several lists that allow immediate reference to specific information: persons by affiliation, persons by location, missions and organization by location.

A Century of Protestant Missions in China, 1807-1907: Being the Centenary Conference Historical Volume. Donald MacGillivray, ed. Shanghai, Christian Literature Society for China, 1907.

A valuable reference volume for Protestant missionary activity up to the twentieth century. It provides a review for each mission group active in China (plus some information on “defunct” missions). Historical information is given as is the sponsoring group(s), personnel, location of headquarters (both within China and abroad), types of work the mission does, martyrs (including location and date of death), literary works, leadership, and various statistics: number of stations in each province, their location, date of “opening” a province or locale, number of chapels active, number of foreign and Chinese staff, number of converts, etc.

Many Chinese-language documents relating to missionary affairs have been published, among them:

Qingji jiaowu jiao'an dang 清季教務教案檔. Vol. I. Taipei: Academia Sinica, Institute of Modern History, 1973.

These are the Zongli yamen archives on Christian affairs and cases of dispute regarding Christianity, covering the period 1860-1909. The collection represents only a partial publishing of the 910 boxes in the Academia Sinica archives. A chronology of major events in English is listed at the end of each volume.

There is also a helpful listing of such sources:

Jiao'an shiliao bianmu 教案史料編目. Wu Shengde and Chen Zenghui. Beijing: Yanjing School of Religion, 1941.

Contains a list of 328 cases involving missionaries from the 22nd year of Daoguang to the end of Guangxu; a list of sources organized by abbreviated title, form title, number of juan, editor/compiler, publication; a list of cases in page order as listed in the guide; an index of personal names. Arranged by reign period. Includes a section on the Boxers. Has author index. Organized into four sections. Each section contains the case title, date in lunar calendar, date in Western calendar, source in abbreviated form, reign of emperor, number in juan, number in ye, a or b indicating top or bottom of page.

 

中華電子佛典協會 The Digital Chinese Buddhist Text Association

The SAT Daizōkyō Text Database_Saṃgaṇikīkṛtaṃ Taiśotripiṭakaṃ

中國佛教寺廟志數位典藏 Digital Archive of Chinese Buddhist Temple Gazetteers

滿文藏經研究資料 Research Material for the Manchu Buddhist Canon

 

Morality Books 善書

 Conventionally translated in English as "morality books," shanshu 善書 represented a new way of thinking about the world and the moral action of individual and community that emerged out of the intellectual ferment of the long seventeenth century.  Existing in a developing sanjiao 三教("three teachings"–Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism) discursive space, the late Ming witnessed intense debate about whether moral action in the details of everyday life could have lasting effects on one's karmic lot–could, in the conventional phrasing, change the individual's "fate"命.  Shanshu brought together the intellectual resources of the three teachings, and blended them with folk religious practices to address every aspect of life, religious practice, and society.  By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they had become one of the most widely printed and circulated kinds of text in China.  Morality books are not merely useful for studying religion: as the categories below demonstrate, they included a great diversity of texts that addressed every aspect of leading a fulfilling and ethical life.  Shanshu are instead best understood in two ways:  1) As a venue for social critique and reflection-- the voice of a social conscience–analogous today to something between How to Be an Antiracist, a newspaper editorial, and a heated discussion on social media and 2) a how-to video on YouTube: anything from how to handle delicate family relationships to how to be happy to how to childproof your house.  Especial emphasis here has been placed on highlighting texts available in Harvard's magnificent collections of shanshu and related materials.  In most cases these have been digitized either by Harvard or Google.  Links are to entries on Hollis, which provide basic bibliographic information (although sometimes with shanshu this is not necessarily entirely accurate) and access information.   

 

The Big Three

 Together referred to as the "Three Scriptures on Sageliness" or "The Three Sagely Scriptures" 三聖經, these three texts had become the intellectual flagships of the morality-book movement by the late eighteenth century.  The Taishang ganying pian was by far the most influential and emerged to prominence the earliest.  Of the greatest interest to the historian are the extensive commentaries on each of these texts.     

Taishang ganying pian太上感應篇 Treatise of the Most Exalted on Action and Response.  A work of sanjiao piety and ethics, and one of the most widely circulated and printed texts in late imperial China.  Described by missionary observers as China's "Bible" by virtue of its omnipresence in homes and its role in forming moral judgments, the Ganyingpian's  busy life included imperially commissioned translations into Manchu, and a dizzying number of reprintings, commentaries, and new editions, often with illustrations (the so-called "pictorial explanations" 感應篇圖說).  Harvard owns an excellent collection of pre-modern editions, including one from Korea.  Linked here is an elegant sample edition of a "pictorial explanation" on the scripture from 1755, which also contains a copy of the Manchu translation.  For an early English translation, a cooperation between the American academic Paul Carus and Japanese cleric and scholar D.T. Suzuki, click here.

Wenchang dijun yinzhi wen 文昌帝君陰騭文. The Tract of the Wenchang Thearch on Hidden Merit.  A Daoist deity of folk origins, by late imperial China the Wenchang Thearch (also referred to as the Zitong Thearch 梓潼帝君 after the county in Sichuan from which his cult originally spread) had assumed a uniquely important status as the god responsible for the civil service exams and literati life in general (as suggested by his name, meaning "the flourishing of culture/literature").  The object of intense literati devotion–especially from those who had not yet passed the exams–Wenchang became associated with a demanding moral vision for behavior in everyday life.  Those who failed to live up to the Thearch's standards of personal integrity and character would have no hope of obtaining the degree they craved.  Linked here is a fascinating late-nineteenth-century edition of the scripture with commentary that imitates the eight-legged style required for civil-service exam essays.     

 

   

Guansheng dijun jueshi zhenjing 關聖帝君覺世真經 The True Scripture of the Guansheng Thearch to Awaken the World.  Although arguably a less prominent figure in the written morality book tradition than the Wenchang Thearch, the Guansheng Thearch (more commonly referred to as Guandi 關帝) was hugely influential in popular belief in late imperial China.  A symbol of loyalty and righteousness (忠義), his bearded statue–glaring with martial ferocity out from its shrine at devotees--continues to be found all over the Sinophone world, from temples in Taiwan to Triad headquarters in Hong Kong, to supermarkets in Boston's Chinatown.  Linked here is an 1845 edition of the scripture with extensive commentary.     

 

Other Important General Morality Books

 

玉歷寶鈔

呂祖全書

 

 

Conduct of Life—General: Personal Cultivation, Running a Household, Handling Social Relationships

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed the appearance of the household-management/conduct-of-life manual as a cultural phenomenon.  Sanjiao syncretic beliefs and in particular the focus on moral action in the context of everyday life promoted by ledgers of merit and demerit undoubtedly help to explain this sudden surge of texts.  Also a factor is surely the late-Ming print revolution, which allowed manuals to be printed cheaply, and made accessible to wider audiences.  Harvard owns a particularly fine collection of late-Ming and early Qing editions, as does the Gest Library at Princeton.     

 

Diji lu 迪吉錄. 1622.  This late-Ming compendium is probably the most important early conduct-of-life manual,  which continued to be highly influential throughout the Qing.  Setting many of the conventions of the genre, topics covered include highly detailed descriptions of how to be a moral official, family relationships, sexual ethics, and managing servants.  Linked here is a magnificent 1631 edition available online from the Gest Library.      

Yongxing bian庸行編, 1691.  An encyclopedic and influential manual from the early Qing.  Harvard owns a very fine first edition. 

Chuanjia bao 傳家寶, 1739.  Written and compiled by the Yangzhou philanthropist Shi Chengjin 石成金 (Shi Tianji 石天基, 1659- c.174?), this is the most important and wide-ranging manual of them all.  Want to be happy, eat healthily, and have fulfilling relationships?  Look no further.  This truly comprehensive text–large sections of it written in pithy baihua-- has everything you need to know.  Its contents are dizzyingly varied: short stories, poems, joke collections, seating guides for banquets and other get togethers, obstetrics texts, commentaries on Buddhist scripture.  The Chuanjia bao was reprinted nearly continuously throughout the Qing, and has enjoyed a notable comeback in contemporary China, as a search online reveals.  Linked here is Harvard's copy of the first edition, forty volumes in four cases.  

Xinzeng yuanti guanglei ji 新增願體廣類集, 1765.  Claiming to be a revised version of the Yongxing bian, this handsome, concise four-volume set shows the popularization of conduct-of-life manuals over the early and mid-Qing.  A third of the length of the Yongxing bian, the Xinzeng yuanti guanglei ji is a much more accessible guide for the upwardly mobile merchant or minor literatus; a particularly notable change from the Yongxing bian is the addition of a sexual ethics manual as the fourth volume.

Wuzhong yigui 五種遺規.  Compiled by the official and scholar Chen Hongmou 陳宏謀(1696-1771), this is a massive anthology of earlier household management and conduct-of-life manuals, with Chen's commentary.  Texts anthologized range from writings of the philosopher Zhu Xi, to selections from contemporary manuals.  Linked here is an 1868 edition; the text is also available on Erudition.   

 

Ledgers of Merit and Demerit 功過格

The kind of text that arguably started the whole morality book movement in the early seventeenth century.  Ledgers contain highly detailed lists of good and bad deeds, with accompanying point values, positive (功) and negative (過).  The practitioner keeps track of points and at the end of a certain time period adds them up.  A surplus of positive points leads to improvement of one's karmic lot.  Often accompanied by detailed commentaries, the ledgers contain a treasure trove of information about culture, society, religion, and intellectual trends.  Ledgers were published on their own, and in larger anthologies, such as the conduct-of-life texts discussed above.  

 

Yuxujie gongguo ge 御虛階功過格. Compiled by the influential eighteenth-century activist and shanshu author Huang Zhengyuan 黃正元 (dates unknown).  The 1790 edition linked here is especially intriguing.  A handsome boxed set of shanshu compiled and edited by Huang, its publication was financed by a Manchu official at the behest of his pious elderly mother.    

Huizuan gongguo ge zhushi luyao 彙纂功過格註釋錄要, 1806.  Detailed commentaries in the mode of an edition of the Taishang ganying pian.  This ledger edition has an intriguing twist: the first four volumes of the boxed set are taken up by the ledger and its commentaries, while the last two are a manual of obstetrics and neonatal medicine.   

Secondary Scholarship:

Cynthia Brokaw, Ledgers of Merit and Demerit: Social Change and Moral Order in Later Imperial China (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991).  The most important piece of English-language scholarship on the ledgers, especially strong on the intellectual climate of the early seventeenth century that gave them birth.  Brokaw is an alumna of the EALC Ph.D. program, and her name can be found written on the date cards of many ledger editions in HYL.   

 

Specialty Morality Books:

 

Sexual Ethics


拔慾海

戒淫摘要

戒淫功過格

慾海慈航

勸孝戒淫篇

不可錄

 

Infanticide

L'infanticide et l'Oeuvre de la Sainte-Enfance en Chine (Chang-hai : Autographie de la Mission catholique à l'orphelinat de Tou-sè-wè, 1878).  Put together by the French Jesuit missionary Gabriel Palatre, this is an important collection of sources–both the original Chinese text and French translation–relating to the practice of female infanticide in late imperial Southern China.  Palatre draws heavily from Chinese morality books-- especially noteworthy are high-quality reproductions of two anti-infanticide pamphlets, too fragile to have survived otherwise–which makes the book a valuable reference.  As historians have noted, though, his interpretive judgments on the prevalence of infanticide should be taken with a grain of salt.  

戒溺女文 : 一卷; 救嬰捷法: 一卷.

Also, please reference the important materials under “Thinking about Civil Society and Collective Action” below.

For secondary literature, see Michelle King, Between Life and Death: Female Infanticide in Nineteenth-Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014).

 

 

Opium Addiction

While scholars tend to associate anti-opium polemic with missionaries, opium addiction was an issue that weighed on the indigenous Chinese social conscience equally if not more heavily.  The texts below, all in Chinese, give us a fascinating chance to compare missionary and shanshu perspectives and moral logic, and develop an idea of the rich complexity of late Qing social discourse. 

勸戒食鴉片烟醒世圖十二幅

鴉片速改文

勸戒鴉片良言.

勸誡鴉片論 : 福建平話.

Qingmo shixin xiaoshuoji 清末時新小說集.  In 1895 the English missionary and prolific English-Chinese translator John Fryer (Ch. 傅蘭雅, 1839-1928; subsequently inaugural Professor of Oriental Languages and Literature at UC Berkeley) announced a novel competition, soliciting original works of fiction in Chinese addressing what he saw as China's three most pressing problems: foot-binding, stereotyped eight-legged exam writing (presumably because it held back Chinese intellectuals from focussing on "modern" scientific and technical knowledge), and opium addiction.  Due to external circumstances, the competition was never properly concluded–no winner was ever declared--but Fryer received an impressive response from Chinese literati.  The novels– social critique written in Chinese by Chinese literati for a contest organized by a foreign missionary–present a fascinating window into cultural dimensions of opium addiction, and opium's place in social discourse during the late Qing.  The manuscripts are held in the UC Berkeley Starr East Asian Library.  

 

Thinking about Civil Society and Collective Action

 

得一錄

江寧府重建普育堂志

江寧府重修普育四堂志 : 6卷

Fuma Susumu, !!!!! 

On Yu Zhi, see!!!!!

On 善會 and 善堂, see!!!!!

 

 

 

Collections of Stories on the Karmic Retribution and Moral Action

藍苕館外史

池上草堂筆記. 四集 : 24卷 : 一名勸戒錄.

音釋坐花誌果 : 八卷

陶齋誌果 

 

 

 

Bibliography

Catholicism

Mungello, David E. The Great Encounter of China and the West, 1550-1800. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999

Menegon, Eugenio. Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009.

Peterson, Willard J. "Learning from Heaven: The Introduction of Christianity and Other Western Ideas into Late Ming China." In The Cambridge History of China: The Ming Dynasty, 1368-1644, Part 2, edited by Denis C. Twitchett and Frederick W. Mote, 708-88. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Witek, John W. “Catholic Missionaries, 1644–1800.” In The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 9 Part 2, edited by Willard J. Peterson, 513-70. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Protestantism

 

Morality Books

 

Others

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