Conversion through science. Modern Europe in the mirror of China
The theme of the November 2016 " Débat d'histoire " is the " découverte " of China by European missionaries and scholars in the 16th and 17th centuries. " Discovery " paradoxical of an immense empire known since the thirteenth century thanks to the widespread handwritten circulation of Marco Polo's account. But as Antonella Romano shows in her book Impressions de Chine. L'Europe et l'englobement du monde (XVIe-XVIe siècle), there were several reasons why knowledge of this land of the Far East became necessary from the mid-16th century onwards. Firstly, the discovery of America forced us to think of the world as a globe where continents and oceans were linked ; then, in the wake of the conquests, the project of universal evangelization, giving reality to the original meaning of " catholic ".
China, with its writing, printing and schools - whose government was guided by reason and laws - and whose peoples seemed to have no religion, was, par excellence, a land of mission awaiting the Christian word (as had been another empire in its time, that of Rome). By penetrating to the very heart of China and converting its emperor, the missionaries sent by Rome made this promise a reality.
The Jesuits were the first and most fervent protagonists of this immense undertaking. To bring it to fruition, they had to invest in three areas : linguistics, with the learning of Chinese ; mathematics and astronomy, to satisfy the emperors, sons of heaven ; cartography, to situate China on the map of the globe. This is what Mateo Ricci did on the various world maps he drew at each stage of his journey to China, which took him to Beijing and the emperor. For the Jesuits, " the map precedes the gospel ", writes Antonella Romano, and the scholarly mission must lead to conversion. Hence their participation in the Imperial Bureau, where astronomical questions and calendar reform were discussed.
The undertaking was not without risk. Both inside and outside the Company, criticism mounted against what was perceived as the misuse of natural astrology in the service of judicial astrology, that of predictions condemned by the Church and the veneration of the heavens. Ricci had used the Confucian word for heaven to name the Christian God. Criticism by Dominicans and Franciscans sent to China from 1630 onwards also targeted the Jesuits' acceptance of Chinese rites. This led to a quarrel that lasted until the 18th century.
The collection and publication of writings, both printed and handwritten, describing China were not without effect in the West. They forced profound revisions, both epistemological and theological. The credit given to direct observations broke with the certainty of equivalence between things seen, things heard and things read, and became the criterion for validating Chinese books. Moreover, the chronologies of Chinese dynastic annals were bound to undermine those drawn from the Bible.
Knowledge about China led to unexpected encounters. Its production ignored denominational opposition (several major Jesuit texts were printed in Protestant cities, starting with Amsterdam), was the result of voluntary or involuntary collaboration between subjects of different sovereigns, and established a close link between knowledge and information. But other frontiers were more resistant. With the exception of mathematics and astronomy, Chinese science remained resistant to European innovations : " in the face of the hypothesis of a métissage of learned cultures, Chinese cartography offers an excellent example of impermeability " writes Antonella Romano. The legitimate attention paid by historians to connections and hybridizations should not, therefore, mask its flip side : the persistence of compartmentalization, indifference and rejection.
Antonella Romano's book will be presented and discussed, in the presence of its author, Director of Studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and Director of the Centre Alexandre Koyré, by Stéphane Van Damme, Professor at the European University Institute in Florence. Stéphane Van Damme is the author of the first volume of Histoire des sciences et des savoirs, published by Seuil, which we presented in Débats in January