What do you get when you have a Chinese philosopher, a Jesuit Priest, and a Kaifeng Jew? Don’t know?... Neither do I. ConfuciusConfucius (Chinese: 孔夫子; pinyin: Kǒng Fūzǐ; Wade-Giles: K’ung-fu-tzu), lit. “Master Kung,”[1] September 28, 551 BCE – 479 BCE) was a Chinese thinker and social philosopher, whose teachings and philosophy have deeply influenced Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese thought and life. Matteo Ricci
In 1601 he returned to Beijing where he was not initially granted an audience with the Emperor of China but, after he presented the Emperor with a chiming clock, Ricci was finally allowed to present himself at the Imperial court of Wanli thus becoming the first Westerner to be invited into the Forbidden City. Although Ricci was given free access to the Forbidden City he never met the Wanli Emperor; however, Wanli did grant him patronage by allotting to Ricci a generous stipend and the title of Superior-General of the Jesuits in China.[1] Ricci was able to meet important officials and leading members of the Beijing cultural scene. Kaifeng JewsIt is surmised that the ancestors of the Kaifeng Jews came from Central Asia. The uninterrupted existence of this religious and ethnic group, lasting for more than 700 years in totally different socio-cultural surroundings strongly dominated by Confucian moral and ethical principles, is a unique phenomenon, not only in Chinese history, but also in the thousands of years of Jewish civilisation. Source
So a Jesuit Priest who was the first Westerner to visit the Forbidden City, and discover an ancient Chinese/Jewish community, was also the man responsible for introducing Confucianism to Europe. Nothing unusual about that, I suppose. Further Reading: The Jesuit Oath Exposed. (Alternate: PDF.) Comments are closed.
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