Jesuits and Matriarchs is a terrific book. It begins with a simple insight: Because Chinese female religiosity was largely domestic, it follows that the domestic was the site of much devotional activity of Chinese Catholic women in the seventeenth century. The sources for domestic religious activity are sparse and complicated to interpret, but they exist. The most important sources are the Jesuit letters, which often describe the activities of female religious. Very few of the women that Amsler talks about—such as Candida Xu (1607–1680, the grandaugher of Xu Guangqi [1582–1633]) and Agatha Yang (1557–1627, the daughter of Yang Tingyun)—come from well-documented families, while the majority are absent from the historical record except as they appear in Jesuit accounts. (Xu Guangqi and Yang Tingyun were two of the so called “Three Pillars of Catholicism” of the late Ming dynasty; it is not surprising that women in their families also converted to Catholicism.)

Amsler shows us details of exactly how the Jesuit missionary experience in China was gendered. I will recount one telling example here. The missionary Matteo Ricci initially decided that the Jesuits should wear Buddhist robes. He understood that the choice of clothing would influence how the missionaries were regarded by the Chinese. When he realized that Buddhist monks had a social status much lower than that of the literati, he changed his mind and decreed that Jesuits should dress in literati robes. Amsler suggests that this change had consequences for the missionaries’ relationships with women. While monks did in fact have some contact with women, members of the literati class had virtually no contact with elite women outside of their own families. Women and men both went to Buddhist and Daoist temples, but women rarely attended Catholic church services. The fact that the Jesuits positioned themselves as analogous to literati, adopting what Amsler calls “literati masculinity,” surely exacerbated this gender segregation (13–14).

Amsler is able to document the presence of Catholic devotional groups in a number of private homes. Women of the elite were often literate and could and did read the copious writings in Chinese by the Jesuits. Amsler suggests that the writings of the Jesuits stood as a kind of substitute for in-person visits, which would not have been welcome in the inner chambers where these religious activities took place. Amsler argues that literate women were a kind of intermediary between missionaries and non-literate female believers.

The book offers inspiration for further research. Amsler argues that Catholic women were more likely to be patrons of their religion than non-Catholic Chinese women. And she argues that one important contribution of these women was in textiles, including some fabulous pieces that were sent back to Europe. Candida Xu contributed resources that Amsler estimates would have funded all the Jesuits in China for a decade (144). Xu came from a well-to-do family, but her donations came at least in part from her own handiwork. Philippe Couplet, the author of an important biography of Xu, Histoire d'une dame chrétienne de la Chine (Paris, 1688), tells us that she, her daughters, and their maidservants did needlework which they sold in local markets. Xu then gave money to two servants to invest in an enterprise run by the servants. While it is well-known that women earned money by textile work in the seventeenth century, large-scale enterprises with women of gentry families working alongside of (and supervising) servant workers are fairly rare, and Amsler's account is an important one.

But Amsler's assertion that Catholic women were more likely to contribute to religion than devout followers of other Chinese religions bears further investigation. It is clear that many Chinese Catholic women were quite generous in their donations. For example, an account book kept by the Jesuit François de Rougemont at Changzhou tells us that between 1674 and 1676 eleven out of fourteen donations were made by women. While many of the donations by women were modest, the total amount donated by women made up about one third of Rougemont's annual expenses. (142–143). Amsler argues that the contributions of Chinese women to the church, especially their contributions of exquisite needlework, suggest an awareness of membership in a global religious network (151). We do not know as much as we might like about the contributions of devout Chinese women to Buddhist or Taoist religions, but there are examples of women as patrons, especially women of the Ming imperial family. It is not clear whether the sources exist for a systematic comparison of women's contributions to various types of religious organizations, but it would be an interesting topic for further research.

Amsler ends with the suggestion that a comparison of the various ways in which gender is dealt with in Jesuit missions would be productive, and this is clearly the case. But what does her book tell us about gender and religion in China? The numbers involved are small, but the reports of the Jesuits give us a new glimpse into the world of Chinese religious women. We see them organized; we see them raising money; we see them changing Catholic ritual and beliefs so that they made more sense in Chinese terms. For example, because images of the Virgin Mary bore some resemblance to the bodhisattva Guanyin who, among other things, was revered as a granter of sons, Mary too was viewed as a granter of sons.

The book brings together questions of domesticity, the household, women's work, religion, and connections to a global Catholic Church in interesting and important ways. The book is accessibly written and could be productively used in classes which deal with Chinese religion, with the missionary enterprise, or with women in religion more broadly.