Trading Jesuits for ritual influence : Kangxi's wager in the Chinese Rites Controversy

• Main Author: Tan, Louis Aquinas Kai Rong
• Other Authors: Els van Dongen
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2022
• Subjects: Humanities::History
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/155987
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The Chinese Rites Controversy is a dispute from the 17-18th century on whether it was permissible for Catholics to participate in ancestor rites and the veneration of Confucius. At its climax, Pope Clement XI ruled that they were impermissible, and in response the reigning Kangxi Emperor (康熙帝) wrote the Imperial Ban to prohibit all missionary activity by Westerners. Why did the emperor respond in such a manner? Setting aside the trope on a clash of cultures between East and West, I make the case that Kangxi acted in such a manner to retain ancestor and Confucius rites as tools for exerting imperial influence. This essay contains a pioneering study in the conflict between the demands of Kangxi’s 1670 Sacred Edict (shengyu 聖) and Clement XI's 1715 anti-rites ruling Ex Illa Die. While the pope explicitly forbade Middle Kingdom Catholics from visiting the “ edibus Confucii (Houses of Confucius)” on the “Novilunio (New Moon)” and “Plenilunio (Full Moon)”, the emperor obliged all imperial subjects to visit their local Confucian shrine or hall on the first day (i.e. New Moon) of each month in a ceremony proclaiming the Sacred Edict, which was essentially state propaganda in Confucian verse.