page_title: Jesuit China missions
section_title: The arrival of Jesuits
hierarchical_section_title: Jesuit China missions / Jesuits in China / The arrival of Jesuits
caption_attribution_description: Peter Paul Rubens made this drawing of Nicolas Trigault in a Chinese costume when the Jesuit missionary to China was in Antwerp
context_page_description: The history of the missions of the Jesuits in China is part of the history of relations between China and the Western world. The missionary efforts and other work of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, between the 16th and 17th century played a significant role in continuing the transmission of knowledge, science, and culture between China and the West, and influenced Christian culture in Chinese society today.
  The first attempt by the Jesuits to reach China was made in 1552 by St. Francis Xavier, Navarrese priest and missionary and founding member of the Society of Jesus. Xavier never reached the mainland, dying after only a year on the Chinese island of Shangchuan. Three decades later, in 1582, Jesuits once again initiated mission work in China, led by several figures including the Italian Matteo Ricci, introducing Western science, mathematics, astronomy, and visual arts to the Chinese imperial court, and carrying on significant inter-cultural and philosophical dialogue with Chinese scholars, particularly with representatives of Confucianism.
context_section_description: Contacts between Europe and the East already dated back hundreds of years, especially between the Papacy and the Mongol Empire in the 13th century. Numerous traders – most famously Marco Polo – had traveled between eastern and western Eurasia. Christianity was not new to the Mongols, as many had practiced Christianity of the Church of the East since the 7th century (see Christianity among the Mongols). However, the overthrow of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty by the Ming in 1368 resulted in a strong assimilatory pressure on China's Muslim, Jewish, and Christian communities, and outside influences were forced out of China. By the 16th century, there is no reliable information about any practicing Christians remaining in China.
  Fairly soon after the establishment of the direct European maritime contact with China (1513) and the creation of the Society of Jesus (1540), at least some Chinese became involved with the Jesuit effort. As early as 1546, two Chinese boys enrolled in the Jesuits' St. Paul's College in Goa, the capital of Portuguese India. One of these two Christian Chinese, known as Antonio, accompanied St. Francis Xavier, a co-founder of the Society of Jesus, when he decided to start missionary work in China. However, Xavier failed to find a way to enter the Chinese mainland, and died in 1552 on Shangchuan island off the coast of Guangdong, the only place in China where Europeans were allowed to stay at the time, but only for seasonal trade.
  A few years after Xavier's death, the Portuguese were allowed to establish Macau, a semi-permanent settlement on the mainland which was about 100 km closer to the Pearl River Delta than Shangchuan Island. A number of Jesuits visited the place (as well as the main Chinese port in the region, Guangzhou) on occasion, and in 1563 the Order permanently established its settlement in the small Portuguese colony. However, the early Macau Jesuits did not learn Chinese, and their missionary work could reach only the very small number of Chinese people in Macau who spoke Portuguese.
  A new regional manager ("Visitor") of the order, Alessandro Valignano, on his visit to Macau in 1578–1579 realized that Jesuits weren't going to get far in China without a sound grounding in the language and culture of the country. He founded St. Paul Jesuit College (Macau) and requested the Order's superiors in Goa to send a suitably talented person to Macau to start the study of Chinese. Accordingly, in 1579 the Italian Michele Ruggieri (1543–1607) was sent to Macau, and in 1582 he was joined at his task by another Italian, Matteo Ricci (1552–1610).
caption: Nicolas Trigault (1577–1629) in Chinese attire, by Peter Paul Rubens.
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