The McGrath Institute for Church Life invites you to its spring lecture on China.
The encounter between European knowledge and Chinese elites in late imperial times (1580–1840) can be seen through the lens of Song Neo-Confucian Lu Jiuyuan’s dictum that sages, East and West, share the same mind (心) and principle (理). This universalist claim enabled Catholic missionaries and their Chinese interlocutors, such as Ming Grand Secretary Xu Guangqi, to argue for the compatibility of European learning with Confucianism. Drawing on recent scholarly work, this talk first explores how Chinese literati in the Ming and Qing periods and the Qing court engaged with European scientia (astronomy, mathematics, etc.) “on their own terms,” selectively adapting it within indigenous frameworks like the “Chinese Origins of Western Learning” (Xixue Zhongyuan 西學中源) theory. However, this accommodation was fraught with tensions and limits. The encounter extended beyond science to the core tenets of Catholic theology and ritual, where doctrines like original sin and exclusive salvation proved deeply incommensurable with Chinese cosmological and ethical views. The Chinese Rites Controversy stands as the most dramatic expression of this negotiation. The agency of Chinese scholars emerged in their critiquing and rejecting European claims, especially by the Qianlong reign. Ultimately, the Sino-Western encounter was not a simple story of transmission but a complex, dialectical process of translation, adaptation, and resistance that influenced the intellectual landscapes of both China and Europe.
Guest Speaker
Eugenio Menegon, Ph.D., teaches Chinese and World History at Boston University. His interests include Chinese-Western relations in late imperial times, Chinese religions and Christianity in China, Chinese science, the intellectual history of Republican China, and the history of maritime Asia. His 2009 book Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China (recipient of the AAS Joseph Levenson Prize in Chinese Studies, 2011) centered on the life of Catholic communities in China’s Fujian province between 1630 and the present. His current book project is an examination of the daily life and political networking of European residents at the Qing court in Beijing during the 17th and 18th centuries.
Free and Open to the Public. Followed by an Open Discussion.
Originally published at mcgrath.nd.edu.