How Jesuit China missions shaped Chinese society

Li Xiumei loves snow. “It purifies and silences everything, especially in this part of the campus,” said the associate law professor at the Beijing Administration Institute.

“After one snowy night I came here early in the morning to sink my footsteps into the spotless white sponge cake, footsteps that took me to a group of men that has occupied my imagination and much of my time for the past decade.”

To be precise, it is repeat visits to the tombstones of these men that have kept Li in their thrall. These tombstones, standing quietly on a patch of land measuring about 2,150 sq ft, are in tight formation. The intimacy is evocative, because centuries ago, when those to whom these monuments are dedicated arrived in China after months, or even years, at sea, they were essentially alone, with almost no one to turn to but themselves and their God.

They were Jesuit missionaries who journeyed to China from Europe between the 16th and 19th centuries, and they had at least two things in common: undoubted talent, including personal and diplomatic skills, and unwavering dedication to spreading the gospel.

“The Society of Jesus, a religious congregation of the Catholic Church whose members are known as Jesuits, was founded by Ignatius of Loyola, a nobleman from northern Spain, in the mid-16th century,” Li said.

“More than 1,000 Jesuits, not to mention other missionaries who had come under different banners within the Catholic Church, came to China. But most of those buried here are either the forerunners of the Jesuit mission or its most active members.”

Of all the 63 gravestones on the campus, three stand relatively apart, on a lot separated with the rest by a low wall. Their prominent position is indicated by the symbolic earth mounds behind each monument.

“The middle one belongs to Matteo Ricci, the Italian believed to have been the first Jesuit to enter Beijing,” Li said. “To its left is that of Johann Adam Schall von Bell, a German whose eventful life mirrors the tumults of his time; and to its right is that of Ferdinand Verbiest, a Belgian who became a de facto mentor for Kangxi (1654-1722), one of Chinese history’s greatest emperors and a contemporary of the Sun King of France.

“They shared not only legends, myths and anecdotes, but also triumphs and travails, and here, their final resting place.”

Zhang Xiping, a professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University, has spent most of his academic life researching the cultural exchanges between China and the West and has published books on the Jesuit mission in the country’s history.

“From the very beginning they realised that in recruiting in the name of God they had to be very flexible, to ‘become all things to all,’ to use the words of Loyola himself,” Zhang said.