Instance a group of Blue Banner officers confessing that as Christians they were The Rites Controversy was concluded in 1714 with a bull by Pope Benedict XIV,īanishing all ancestral rites from congregations in China. Line.11 The relative spiritual nature of the 'rites ' formed the basis for the controversy within the Catholic establishment during the late seventeenth century.12 Ancestors were said to survive only as benevolent spirits if their tablets were regularly visited ('worshipped') by direct maleĭescendants, creating considerable psychological pressure to continue the ancestral Had to be reconciled with the fundamental principle of filial respect (xiao it ) -įor both parents and ancestors. Not keep a Holy Image, I shall not preach in public and not affix door scrollsįor a successful inculturation of Christianity into rural China, Christian doctrine In these troubled times I shall not enter a church. In 1736, Beijing Chri st ians were urged to discard every outward sign of Christian affiliation, based on thi s basic oath: ' I amĪ Christian. Even the few remaining European guardians of the faith advisedĬhristians to adopt a low profile. 9 Under such pressure, Christians often chose to dispense with anyĮxternal symbols. In the reprisal s of 1714 aga inst converts in the Shandong district of Feichengĭistrict m:~±.Jlt!j\ '3\, the prefect of Jinan demanded that Chri stians remove all heterodox insignia, while reinstating the auspicious doorframe couplets cr~7iflf-tijy~)8ĭuring slightly later state action, Christians refusing to oblige were caned or forced The portal of the Eastern Cathedral (Dongtang *lit) simply read 'True Origin of all C reation' ( ~~~JJJ!\ 7
The Nan tang was paitie dedicated with a paean by the Kangx iĮmperor, while the Beitang bore the inscription 'Approved by imperial edict asĬhurch of the Lord of Heaven' ( §' ~ 7C :±lit). Other homes were marked with Christian allusions6 A different type of 'door spirits' (menshen ~']till) were inscriptions (!llt! rll~) above churches, offering protectionīy earthly powers. (xieshu ~iii!~= ), in apparent unison with other cults.4 While many Chri stians di splayed traditional symbols such as the bagua J\3:=~ on doorframes and roofbeams,5 Out that Christians 'chanted sutras' (songjing §iM~) and read ' heretical scriptures' Signs of'heresy' in a ll communities, Christians included. Stressed the importance o f 'Confucian ' family values.: įaced with the emergence of heterodox parallel societies, officials looked for
The veneration of their leaders as 'surrogate ancestors' fulfilled the imperative ofĪncestral worship 2 In the absence of real families, heterodox assoc iations thus Importance, not only because they provided security in old age but also because The loss of kith and kin and for the eventuality of having to di e without offspring, Vi II ages in order to gravitate towards centres of abundance. Harvests and population pressure forced young men to abandon their parental Despite its reputation as the Golden Era of the late empire, 1 the eighteenth centuryĪlso harboured the seeds of the socio-political upheava ls of the nineteenth.
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