Matteo Ricci Read Free

requisite series of studies and were judged spiritually fit also undertook to perform unhesitatingly whatever mission the pope might assign them by taking the specific vow circa missiones . The supreme head was the Praepositus Generalis , or Superior General, subject only to the regulations of the order and the pontiff. The long training before taking the vows and the techniques of self-control and asceticism developed by Loyola in the Spiritual Exercises , published in 1548, strengthened the gifts of discipline, energy, tenacity, and abnegation that made the order’s members ideal instruments for the defense and propagation of the Catholic faith. 11
    Immediately after the creation of the Society of Jesus, Jesuit missionaries traveled the routes opened up by explorers to spread the Gospel among “infidels” in every corner of the world, making converts in Africa, South America, India, Malacca, Japan, and the Moluccas. The most difficult country to penetrate was China, whose coasts had been reached for the first time by the Portuguese in 1515 but where no priest had yet been able to settle. 12 The first missionary to seek entry into the Chinese empire during the Ming dynasty, after founding Jesuit missions in India, the Moluccas, and Japan, was Francis Xavier, who considered it necessary to focus the utmost attention on China due to the evident cultural influence exercised by the empire over the rest of Asia. Xavier was convinced that the missionary work in other Eastern countries, including Japan, would be much easier if China became Christian. Having left Japan and arrived at Goa in India at the beginning of 1552, the Jesuit took up residence a few months later on the small island of Shang-
chuan, ten kilometers off the Chinese coast, and waited in vain for permission to enter the country. After a sudden illness, he died in December 1552, two months after Ricci’s birth.
    In Europe, the members of the Society of Jesus devoted themselves above all to education, considered the most effective form of missionary activity. Their cultural background was immensely rich, even though naturally bent to their religious ends, and many were confessors and advisers to princes and sovereigns. Their teaching took place in colleges, which included schools of every level and universities founded in many European countries and some where missions were operating. Renowned for their educational rigor and attended by members of the order and by the sons of the ruling class, the Jesuit colleges and houses scattered through the whole of Europe numbered over five hundred by the end of the sixteenth century.
    The syllabuses followed the indications of the founder of the order, who envisioned a broad range of disciplines, albeit in line with the dictates of orthodoxy. “As regards letters . . . he wants everyone to be well-versed in grammar and the humanities, especially if aided in this by age and inclination. Then he rejects no kind of accepted culture, neither poetry and rhetoric nor logic and natural and moral philosophy, neither metaphysics nor mathematics . . . because the order must be endowed with every possible means of edification.” 13 The method of teaching followed the instructions formulated by the founders of the order and subsequently laid down in the Ratio studiorum , promulgated in its definitive form in 1599 by Claudio Acquaviva, the heir to a noble Neapolitan family, who became the Superior General in 1581 and was to hold that position for over thirty years, covering the entire span of Ricci’s life in China.
    The Jesuits’ allegiance in philosophy was to Aristotle and in theology to Saint Thomas Aquinas, the doctor of the Church who had succeeded in combining the Stagirite’s teaching with Catholic doctrine in a rational system of thought. As we read in the Ratio studiorum , “Our brethren follow the doctrine of Saint Thomas absolutely and do everything possible to ensure that the students cherish it in their hearts.”