Introduction
At the end of 1717, Giuseppe Cerù, procurator of the East Asian missions in Canton for the Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide –the papal dicastery of missions– penned a long letter addressed to his superiors in Rome. He expressed in unambiguous and urgent terms to the Congregation’s prefect, Cardinal Giuseppe Sacripanti (1642–1727), the dire financial situation of his office in China, and of the missionaries under his care:
I must humbly and with the greatest possible solicitude beg Your Eminence and this Sacred Congregation to immediately send some funds for our missions, if You have not already done so, as I begged You to do last year. I have remained without any funds and thus have been obliged to sell some of the silverware left by our Most Eminent Lord Cardinal de Tournon bona memoria, to be able to pay the subsidies to our bishops and missionaries for this coming year 1718. This way, at least, the said missionaries may not be forced to wander through the Indies, as has happened at other times, begging and seeking alms for a living, with little decorum for this Sacred Congregation and great injury to the poor souls they leave behind in their missions.Footnote 1
This dramatic paragraph recounted the sale of the silverware left by the Apostolic Visitor and Papal Legate Cardinal Carlo Maillard de Tournon, who had died in 1710 in Macao as captive of the Portuguese at the order of the Qing dynasty’s Kangxi emperor, displeased with the outcome of the papal legation in Peking. The passage encapsulates one of the recurrent woes the East Asian procurators of Propaganda Fide faced in the eighteenth century: a lack of funds. Cerù continued by mentioning that the proceedings from the silverware sale had not been sufficient to cover the deficit. However, he had been lucky enough to receive a loan of 550 pesos at no interest from Monsieur “Ville Collet” (i.e., Servan Marie Collet, sieur de la Ville, 1675–1729), captain of the French private vessel Le Martial anchored at Whampoa near Canton, a debt to be repaid in France by Propaganda Fide to the ship’s owner, the rich investor Monsieur Bernard ‘Bear’ (i.e., Béard) from ‘Rean’ (i.e., Rouen, Normandy).Footnote 2 The procurator, however, hastened to add that “this occasion was an accident and a special grace granted to us by the said gentleman, for I have tried with others, the French as well as the English, but to no avail, as they demand 80 [sic!] and more percent only for [the annual] interest [i.e., without counting commissions].”Footnote 3 Securing loans in Canton’s financial market, in other words, was impossibly expensive. Another potential source of income for the procurator that Cerù mentioned was the personal belongings of deceased Propaganda missionaries, called spogli (‘spoils’). He himself, nevertheless, had had little luck in recouping the spogli of the Flemish Franciscan François Drion (1672–1711) in Tonkin, retained by the Spanish Vicar Apostolic Juan de Santa Cruz OP (1645–1721); or of the recently deceased French-Italian Augustinian Guillaume Bonjour-Fabri (Shan Yaozhan 山遙瞻, 1670–1714) in Peking. In fact, the latter’s properties had illegally been remitted to the Manila Augustinians by the Jesuit Visitor Kilian Stumpf (Ji Li’an 紀理安, 1655–1720), in a conscious affront to Propaganda Fide – the bête noire of the China Jesuits under Portuguese padroado – and as an attempt to boycott the Holy See’s intrusion in Jesuit territory. Understandably, the procurator wanted to recover some of the expenses that Propaganda had shouldered for the journeys and livelihood of these two missionaries affiliated with the Sacred Congregation.Footnote 4 Cerù concluded on a desperate note: “Due to all these circumstances, I remain now completely devoid of money for the necessary support of our missions, which need at least three thousand pesos every year.”Footnote 5
This letter contains references to some of the main features in the economic system sustaining the papal missionary enterprise in East Asia, one of the farthest territories from Rome in the world: the shipping of cash from Europe, the Philippines, or the Americas; loans obtained in Asia from European and Chinese merchants, or religious institutions and orders; and, in small part, the inheritances of deceased missionaries. At least another three sources of income not mentioned in this letter were available to the procurator: first, the acquisition of real estate and agricultural land, both in Asia and elsewhere, whose rents went directly to the East Asian missions; second, charitable donations or “foundations” by European princes and ecclesiastics, Chinese officials, and imperial authorities, including the Qing emperors; and third, the proceedings from so-called obras pías, i.e., funds producing a moderate interest deposited in the Portuguese and Spanish system of the Casas de Misericordia. These incomes, deriving from investments outside Propaganda Fide’s support sent from Rome, are also to be found scattered in the procurators’ accounts.Footnote 6
This essay focuses on the pull between Roman attempts at tight economic and disciplinary control over the far flung East Asian missions through financial and accounting practices, and the reality on the ground during the eighteenth century. Cerù’s letter is a physical relic of this power tension between the Roman Curia on the one hand, and its men in Asia on the other hand, i.e., Propaganda Fide procurators in Canton and Macao, and the China inland missionaries. Cerù’s desperation and frustration were in part consequences of the centralising tendencies of the Holy See and its dicasteries (called “congregations”), which created recurring bottlenecks in the disbursement of funds, as well as in the decision-making process in general, concerning disciplinary, doctrinal, liturgical, pastoral, and socioeconomic questions. In the case of Propaganda, the slowness and uncertainty of communication over vast oceans was a further aggravating factor, but so was the inertia of Propaganda Fide’s Roman bureaucracy, which would often postpone decisions for years, a tendency intensified by the complex politics of colonial religious patronage and competition among orders, congregations, and Roman actors at all levels. When it came to financial resources in missionary territories, however, the urgency was immediate and required swift action, as Cerù tried to impress on the prefect: without subsidies and other investments, it was impossible to sustain existing missions and found new ones.Footnote 7
My examination of financial activities and accounts by procurators like Cerù in this essay supports the findings of recent research on Propaganda and Catholic missionary history as a centrally directed global phenomenon. The foundation of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide in 1622 as the last of the Roman Curia’s post-Tridentine dicasteries, as succinctly put by Giovanni Pizzorusso, the foremost expert on the topic, “constituted a solemn and concrete—insofar as it was institutional—affirmation of a shift in the papal attitude toward the missions.” No longer content with entrusting the responsibility of spreading the faith to the Spanish and Portuguese crowns, Pizzorusso continues, Propaganda’s “jurisdiction extended to all non-believers, encompassing the conversion of pagans, heretics and schismatics, as well as the preservation of the Catholic faith within communities of converts. The novelty of the Congregation lay precisely in the consolidation of all these areas of activity within a single body of the Curia.”Footnote 8 This papal centralizing ambition was never fully realized but powerfully influenced the following three centuries of Catholic missionary initiatives. In East Asia, in particular, Propaganda had to contend with missions already established by the religious orders (Jesuits, Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans) for over a century under Spanish and Portuguese patronage. They were eventually joined by the priests of the Missions Étrangères de Paris (MEP), nominally under Propaganda Fide’s control, but in fact very much under the protection of the French monarchy. Nevertheless, even if the Spanish Dominicans, Alcantarine Franciscans, and French MEP priests in China had their own funding and procurators, they were also subject to the pastoral and disciplinary orders coming from the Propaganda Fide procurator on behalf of Rome, in concert with the vicars apostolic named by the Holy See from their own orders. Until the nineteenth century, the Propaganda Fide’s motley crew of missionaries – made up of Italians (secular priests, Discalced Carmelites and Augustinians, Observant Franciscans, Lazarists, Clerics Minor Regular, Barnabites, and members of other congregations and orders), Chinese (mainly the alumni of the College of Naples), French (MEP), and Spaniards (Alcantarine Franciscans and Dominicans) – was in itself an explosive mix of spiritual, theological, disciplinary, and national elements that could create internal tensions and a lack of direction, especially when the chain of command was remote and inefficient. The procurator had to act as a sort of closer regional superior and, for those under his financial purview, use funding as a whip and a rein on his jurisdiction. In this exceptional role, unique in the missionary organization of Propaganda anywhere on the planet, lies the importance of the office of the procurator of East Asia, as a gauge of power relations and economic mechanisms within and outside the church.Footnote 9
Indeed, I argue that the management of the financial and logistical workings of the missionary machine became a powerful way to direct and control the mission from afar, and was used both by the Sacred Congregation in Rome and by the procurators in Macao–Canton to influence their subjects in the East Asian inland missions. The authority of Rome and the procurators did not go uncontested, but oversight over money afforded Propaganda Fide’s superiors the possibility of “starving” and rendering more pliable some rebellious individuals, even forcing them, in cases of particularly egregious misconduct – such as solicitation in the confessional, sexual peccadilloes, embezzlement of funds, and the like – to return to Europe and face disciplinary consequences for their behaviour or even expulsion from religious life.Footnote 10 From the point of view of the Roman centre, financial decisions and the precise accounting of economic resources could thus be used to exercise pressure, or to offer incentives, from afar. However, accounting and financial reporting were also ways for the procurator in China to create a practical mechanism of social control over his direct subjects in the East Asian mission, as well as to justify field decisions to the Roman bureaucracy, and in some cases, to hide or conceal illicit behaviours, or sheer managerial incompetence, for extended periods. The historian today faces the same issues as the historical actors in tracking funds, financial assets, and investments across space and time. This was not only a power struggle over financial resources but also over the knowledge about them.
Accounting in early modern ecclesiastical institutions was usually the preserve of “procurators” like Cerù, economic agents who exercised great power over the finances and priorities of their communities of clergy and laity. In the case of Propaganda Fide, the central bureaucracy had its own clerks (minutanti), charged with inspecting the financial reports coming from the missions and with flagging irregularities and errors to the secretary or pro-secretary, and ultimately to the cardinal prefect, who would then check on those “flags” and make decisions about them.Footnote 11 On the other side of the globe, the procurator had to juggle the variables of time and space to make ends meet for the region entrusted to him. China was one of the farthest Catholic missions, and the logistics of funding and communication were particularly challenging and time-consuming, requiring extensive support networks within and outside the Church. Fortunately, the infrastructures of global trade geared towards the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, including shipping, banking, and a whole set of financial instruments and well-developed accounting and financial reporting practices, had aided these ecclesiastical agents since the very inception of the missionary enterprise.
The Propaganda Fide China Mission in the Eighteenth Century
To understand the broader context that Procurator Cerù faced in East Asia, this section offers background about the Propaganda Fide China mission and the foundation and history of the institution of the procurator of East Asia in the eighteenth century. For many years, Portuguese obstruction and Chinese policing frustrated attempts by Spanish friars to settle in China using a 1608 papal permission to missionize there. The establishment of the Congregation of Propaganda Fide in 1622 was a direct assault on the monopoly of Portugal in Asia, and an attempt to sidestep the padroado. Nevertheless, Propaganda did not immediately focus its full attention on China and East Asia, and its activities there remained on paper for many years. The Sacred Congregation did not have its own missionary personnel and thus had to rely on members of the religious orders to fulfil its mission. In its early years, it acted rather prudently, avoiding entanglements with religious orders under Portuguese and Spanish patronage, because these had been very litigious about jurisdictional issues. Starting in the 1680s, missionaries belonging to other religious societies, besides the Dominicans and Franciscans, joined the Propaganda Fide missions in China, and sometimes were elevated to the position of vicars apostolic. This occurred within complex arrangements that included Spanish royal patronage for some (e.g., the Dominicans and Franciscan Alcantarines), charitable support from specific religious societies and donors for others (e.g., the Missions Étrangères de Paris), and direct – and paltry – support from Propaganda Fide for most.Footnote 12
By 1700, to respond to the polarisation in the notorious Chinese Rites Controversy over the permissibility of ancestral rites and rituals to Confucius for Chinese converts, and to defuse the jurisdictional discord in the missions of Cochinchina, China, and elsewhere in Asia, the Holy See and Propaganda Fide planned to dispatch an apostolic visitor of all Asian missions.Footnote 13 The hope was that a high representative of the pope could act as superior of all missionaries in China, including the Jesuits and the other orders under the patronage of the Portuguese and Spanish Crowns; help solve the internal dissensions and the theological disputes of the Chinese Rites Controversy; and permanently reside at the Qing court as a papal representative. In September 1701, Propaganda Fide recommended to Pope Clement XI (1649–1721) as legate to the Kangxi emperor a member of the Roman Curia, Carlo Tommaso Maillard de Tournon (1668–1710). Pontifical authorities hoped that Tournon, who was ordained as bishop and given the title of Patriarch of Antioch, could remain in Peking, or perhaps Canton, and help coordinate all missionary work, also supervising some of its financial dimensions. The legate and a small retinue of officials and Propaganda Fide missionaries took three years to reach China, using French vessels to avoid Portuguese interference as much as possible. The audiences with the emperor in 1705–1706 were disastrous, and eventually the Portuguese imprisoned Tournon in Macao by imperial order while he was on his way back to Europe, and made life difficult for his retinue. Named a cardinal just before his death in Macao and today buried at the centre of Borromini’s chapel in the Propaganda Fide palace at Piazza di Spagna, Tournon failed in his diplomatic enterprise but left behind some financial and administrative foundations for the papal missionary enterprise – including the new position of procurator – and facilitated the acceptance of the first apostolic missionaries in 1711 as artistic and technical experts at the Qing court.Footnote 14
After Tournon’s death, the papacy and Propaganda Fide considered ways to remedy the disastrous outcome of his mission. In 1715, Clement XI issued a new papal constitution, Ex illa die, condemning the Chinese Rites. It was now necessary to send a new legate to Peking to negotiate the implementation of the constitution and obtain imperial sanction for it, something that optimistic reports from Propaganda Fide missionaries in China seemed to assure. Again, Propaganda Fide was charged with recommending candidates for the enterprise, and Carlo Ambrogio Mezzabarba (Jiale 嘉樂, 1685–1741) assented, receiving the title of Patriarch of Alexandria. This legation (1720–21) also failed in its objectives, but at least Mezzabarba was able to bring some order to the Propaganda Fide missions, assign the members of his retinue to several locations in China, leave some at the service of the Qing court, endow the office of the procurator with new funding, and bring back the body of Tournon from Macao to Rome. By then, the office of the procurator in Canton had been put on more solid footing, and its procedures routinised.
Historiography and Sources
Research on missionary procurators in East Asia and elsewhere has been picking up in recent years, focusing on the Jesuit order and to a lesser degree on the mendicant orders. This wave of scholarship has revealed like never before the importance of economic power structures in sustaining the missions as both religious and geo-political enterprises.Footnote 15 Unfortunately, relevant detailed financial materials and accounting ledgers are often fragmentary and incomplete. In my own research, however, I have encountered a notable exception to this source fragmentation. The ledgers and economic reports of the Propaganda Fide procurators in East Asia have survived in good quantity and in a continuative manner from the early eighteenth to the early twentieth century.Footnote 16 While most religious orders and congregations gave broad organisational and financial autonomy to their missionary provinces in Asia, Propaganda Fide always tried to control the minutest details of the missionary enterprise, using disciplinary and financial reporting as annual control mechanisms. These financial papers offer a clear picture of the centralising tendency of the Holy See and Propaganda Fide, as well as the many challenges such efforts encountered in the missionary field. It also shows how the functions of the Propaganda procurator can be usefully compared with the more complex, yet, in ultimate analysis, similar Jesuit system, where central control mattered a great deal. This peripheral and unique office within Propaganda has yielded precious materials for us to be able today to reconstruct in greater detail than before the daily life and needs of the missions, and the networking capabilities of the procurators within the global trade system, but it also shows the actual limitations of Rome’s attempts at central control, and how the missions managed to economically survive and sometimes even resist Roman decisions.
Most of the documentation about China’s missionary activities and its finances is kept in the Archivio Storico di Propaganda Fide in Rome (APF). In particular, the Scritture Originali della Congregazione Particolare dell’Indie Orientali e Cina (Original Documents from the Special Commission on the East Indies and China; acronym SOCP; 81 vols.) offer very rich materials on economic matters from China and East Asia. The Commission remained active for 192 years, from 1664 to 1856, and its importance cannot be overstated. Its papers are a veritable treasure trove of original letters, reports, and official documents on which the commission’s decisions were made. In the documents from SOCP, we find accounts on general missionary activity and finances, as well as detailed accounting, usually contained in or appended to the annual “Memorie del Procuratore,” penned by Propaganda Fide procurators in East Asia, and their letters to the secretary, the prefect, and the cardinals of the Sacred Congregation; correspondence from Propaganda Fide missionaries in Peking (1711–1811), including accounting and financial reports from the vice-procurator of north China residing in the Qing capital; administrative materials on assets, such as purchase contracts of houses, blueprints of residences, churches, cemeteries, and drawings of buildings; and reports and letters from the vicars apostolic and Propaganda Fide missionaries of various religious orders and congregations (Franciscans, Dominicans, Missions Étrangères de Paris, Lazarists) in Sichuan, Fujian, Shandong, Shanxi-Shaanxi, and other areas, with some financial and accounting materials. The single most significant collection on the accounting and finances of the East Asian missions, however, is the Archivio Procura Cina (i.e., the Archive of the procurators of Propaganda Fide in East Asia; APF), successively located in Canton, Macao, and Hong Kong. Transported to Rome after the position was abolished in 1923, it consists of forty-seven containers of letters by missionaries and Chinese priests, and all kinds of administrative materials related to the financial and disciplinary functions of the procurator, totalling around twenty thousand documents.
The large quantity of financial documentation on East Asia in the Propaganda Fide Archives, still mostly unexamined, deserves sustained attention and specialised studies. I do not try to analyse this vast body of sources here, but rather concentrate on the papers of one of the procurators, Giuseppe Cerù. Most of my materials and analysis centre not so much on his official papers kept at the Propaganda Fide Archives, but rather on his personal papers. He returned from China to Rome in 1723 with his own small archives and continued to be active and write on China for three decades until his death, leaving behind his own documentation in the Clerics Minor Regular’s central Roman convent of San Lorenzo in Lucìna, now preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Roma (BNCR). Several of the financial reports and letters in this holding are simply copies or drafts of documents whose originals were submitted to Propaganda Fide, and that today can be found there, but some materials are unique. Together, the personal archives from San Lorenzo in Lucìna (BNCR), other materials by Cerù concerning the Tournon Legation preserved at the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome (which I do not have space to consider here), and the manuscripts at the Propaganda Fide Archives offer a sprawling image of the workings of the procurator’s disciplinary, financial, and accounting functions. Next, I summarise the early history of the procura and its functions.Footnote 17
The Foundation of the Procurator’s Office in Canton and Its Rationale
Propaganda Fide’s dependence on commercial shipping to reach Asia, and the need of protection by Portugal, Spain, and France, reveal the weakness of the papal missionary enterprise, and explain why the Congregation finally approved what missionaries and vicars apostolic stationed in the field had advocated for some time: the establishment of a procurator office in East Asia. This was an anomalous position within Propaganda Fide, as the procurator’s powers became very extensive over time, both over financial administration, and ecclesiastical and pastoral matters. In the summer of 1705, while waiting in Canton to leave for his diplomatic mission at the Qing court, Legate Tournon took the initiative to establish the post, pending an assent by the cardinals of Propaganda Fide to an earlier 1703 official request. Macao and Manila were not ideal seats for a procurator, given the opposition of Portugal and Spain to the papacy’s designs, and, in fact, the padroado Bishop of Peking and Propaganda Vicar Apostolic Bernardino Della Chiesa (Yi Daren 伊大人; 1644–1721) had already suggested in 1698 that a procurator instead be based in a Chinese port in Guangdong or Fujian (Canton or Amoy). In August 1705, Tournon ordered his personal physician Giovanni Borghese to purchase one of the two properties that the Missions Étrangères de Paris had acquired in Canton, a large house in the quarter of Xiaonanmen (小南門), from the MEP procurator Jean Bénard (1668–1711), and named a member of his retinue, Ignazio Giampè (1658–1726), as the first Propaganda Fide procurator.Footnote 18
The decision to station Giampè in the great commercial port of southern China – arguably the most important centre of global trade at the time, and subject to Qing jurisdiction – was not a casual one. The Pearl River Delta was the obligatory destination for the large vessels of all East India Companies and the ocean-going junks and sampans from Asian countries, including peninsular and insular Southeast Asia. The city of Canton was also the terminal of a vast transportation network towards the interior of China. It harboured a small Catholic flock and several religious communities (Jesuits, Franciscans, Augustinians, Dominicans, MEP). Finally, it was the seat of the Qing governor and governor-general in charge of introducing foreigners to the Qing court. The Propaganda Fide procurator would thus be well positioned to network with foreign and Chinese merchants, Qing government officials, the not-too-distant Portuguese authorities in Macao, and the Spanish entrepôt of Manila, and to send intelligence from inland missionaries to Rome.
By virtue of their location in Canton, the procurators remained independent of European colonial powers, benignly neglected by the Qing government until 1732. Giampè occupied the residence until his departure for Italy in January 1709, and was then succeeded by other Propaganda Fide priests in this succession: Sabino Mariani (Sha Guo’an 沙國安 1661–1721; proc. 1710); Giuseppe Ignazio Cordero (Luo Ruode 羅若德; 1665–1740; proc. 1710–13); Giuseppe Cerù (proc. 1713–21); Domenico Perroni (Guo Zhongchuan 郭中傳; 1674–1729; proc. 1721–29); and Arcangelo Miralta (Ming Mingwo 閔明我; 1682–1751; proc. 1729–50). In 1732, Procurator Miralta and all other missionaries residing in Canton, who had been allowed to live in that city after the proscription of Christianity in the provinces issued by the Yongzheng emperor in 1724, were deported to Macao by imperial order, part of a broader attempt on the part of the new emperor to control the foreign presence in Canton.
However, the economic operations of the Catholic Church in the interior of China, including the two important Portuguese and French Jesuit missions at the Qing court in Peking, continued. Removal from Canton curtailed opportunities for easy shipping of mail and merchandise, and subjected missionaries from France, Italy, and elsewhere to the whims of the Portuguese authorities in Macao. Miralta, as an agent of the pope infringing upon the Portuguese padroado, was not allowed to purchase any real estate in Macao. A compromise was reached, and he was eventually able to find hospitality in the convent of the Portuguese Dominicans, where the Propaganda Fide procurators resided until 1776, in a sort of jurisdictional limbo as far as the Portuguese authorities were concerned. The history of the procurator continued up to 1923, but in this essay I will focus on Cerù and his personal archive, making occasional references to other procurators he corresponded with after leaving China, such as his CRM confreres Arcangelo Miralta and Francesco Maria Guglielmi (1715–1772).
General and Financial Functions of the Procurator
The Propaganda Fide procurator had responsibility for the missions of East and Southeast Asia, including China, Tonkin (Northern Vietnam), Cochinchina (Southern Vietnam), Ava and Pegu (kingdoms in Burma, now Myanmar), Siam (Thailand), Tibet, and, at least nominally, Japan and Korea. He forwarded reports, letters, and documents sent by vicars apostolic, missionaries, and Christians from the field; composed annual reports on missionary activities and sent annual account books; and employed or paid Chinese scribes in Macao and Canton to copy or compile Chinese materials relevant to the missionary enterprise. The procurator supported the inner missions in China partly thanks to intelligence and indirect patronage at the Qing court, gained through the long-term presence of Propaganda Fide missionaries in the imperial service as technicians (clockmakers, painters, musicians, etc.). He also managed the financial administration and distribution of funds and materials sent from Europe, and this position was thus crucial for the logistical and economic survival of the Propaganda Fide missions in Asia. The procurator acted as de facto superior of all Propaganda Fide missionaries under his territorial sway and as information hub between Rome and the missionaries on the ground, and vice versa.
The day of a procurator was busy with various kinds of business. Often alone in writing multiple copies of his letters, reports, account books, registers of exiting letters and more, he had to send them with separate ships following different routes to prevent the loss of the documents. With time and the growth in the quantity of correspondence to manage, procurators started relying on other confrères, or perhaps even hiring copyists, who would write final copies of reports and letters in a nice and legible calligraphy, with the procurator only signing the document. The annual “Memorie del Procuratore” (Procurator’s News or Memoirs) contained an initial part detailing the condition of the inland missionary stations in China and in the other parts of East and Southeast Asia. Among the duties that were most closely associated with financial matters and accounting was the compilation of reports detailing the budgetary situation of a certain period in narrative form and often suggesting solutions to various economic problems. Attached to some of these reports, especially to the “Memorie,” there were often numerical tables (“Stato della Cassa Generale della Procura” or “Conti”) with the amounts in the procurator’s account (cassa), those received (introito), and those distributed to missionaries as stipends, or spent for the needs of the mission during the past year (esito). These spreadsheets were often accompanied by a separate document of annotations (“Note a’ conti”) where more extended explanations of the numbers and the rationale for the expenses were given, or annotations on the current rates of exchange for silver and gold in Canton, Peking, or Madras, and how they had impacted the accounts. The “Memorie” and the “Conti” were usually finished in late December, ready to be sent with the next departing commercial ships in January, when the seasonal winds were favourable for return to Europe.Footnote 19
The terminology used to name these reports was still in formation when Cerù was procurator and was establishing new formal and uniform accounting procedures. He was the first to send identically structured annual reports from 1712 until his departure in 1721, titled “News [= Notizie] on China regarding the Mission, gathered in chronological order, of the year …,” today preserved in the APF.Footnote 20 Domenico Perroni, Cerù’s successor in Canton in 1721–1729, continued to use the term “Notizie” for his annual reports at the beginning of his tenure, though he dropped the long title. Starting in 1723, he changed the nomenclature to “Memoirs [= Memorie] on China of the year…,” which remained in use with some minor variations for the rest of the century. It was Perroni who also started producing separate accounting documents as attachments to the “Memorie.”Footnote 21
These attachments were produced at the end of each year and sent to Rome to justify the balance sheet. However, the procurator also kept other registers and account books in Canton, both for his own use during the year, and to leave records of his transactions, credits, and debts for his successors. The word for this kind of document was libro maestro or libro mastro, a very common form of ledger book where pages were divided into two columns, or separated into two parts, one with income (introito), the other with expenses (esito). Among Cerù’s personal papers is a copy of the general ledger book covering his tenure from 8 November 1710 to 22 December 1721, whose original was left in Canton for his successor. The section recording expenses (speso) is double the length of that of the income (ricevuto), a fact that reveals the procurator’s difficult budgetary situation.Footnote 22
Table 1 below appears at the end of the libro maestro, compiled by Cerù at the conclusion of his decade in China, with the total numbers in pesos by year and the final sum he left to his successor Perroni in 1722 at the time of his departure. There are some mathematical discrepancies that might be due to the monetary sub-units used (one peso was split into eight reales), but it is apparent that towards the end of his tenure, Cerù had to face serious deficits, with negative balances in 1717, 1719, and 1720.
General Balance Sheet of the Propaganda Fide East Asia Procurator, Cerù, 1710-1722
Table 1: Long description
Annual accounts list amounts received and spent in pezze or pesos, with the resulting cash balance for years 1710–1722. Receipts peak in 1710–1711 at 11,024.5.9 while spending is 2,716.4.0, leaving a balance of 8,308. From 1712 through 1716, spending exceeds receipts each year, and the balance declines steadily to 815 by 1716. The balance turns negative in 1717 at minus 767, then rebounds to 31 in 1718 when receipts rise to 2,980.5.5 and spending is 2,182.6.0. It dips negative again in 1719 and 1720, reaching minus 458 in 1720. A larger inflow in 1721, with 3,722.0.0 received versus 2,600.0.0 spent, restores a positive balance of 664, ending at 323 in 1722. Totals show 26,942.5.0 received and 26,631.7.2 spent overall, but the year-by-year balance reflects timing differences rather than a single net figure.
According to a note closing the table, Cerù left to Perroni a total of 811 pesos; 139 pesos were a donation from Legate Mezzabarba, and the remaining 672 pesos came from the account of the procurator. I do not know how to explain with certainty the inconsistency between the table (323 pesos left) and the postscript. Possibly, other assets were recouped or received by Cerù before his departure for Rome in December 1722 as envoy of the legate tasked with bringing important documents to Innocent XIII, which he presented in November 1723.
A clue to a possible explanation can be found in another document sent by the Propaganda Fide in Rome to Cerù, dated 10 October 1721, that must have reached him in Canton before his departure for Europe, and that possibly indicated that he received some extra funds in time to pass them on to Perroni.Footnote 23 The text is divided into two parts. Part A (“Allocations to make in Manila,” ff. 681r-v) is an order by Propaganda Fide to transfer amounts into different funds in Manila for the sustenance of the China mission, including sums from Legate Mezzabarba, the Sacred Congregation itself, yields from a foundation established in Manila by Sabino Mariani, and offers from the Venerable Congregation and Brethren of the Apostolic Mission of the Naples Cathedral and Don Diego Ripa, brother of the China Propaganda Fide missionary Matteo Ripa, for a total of 7,284.15 scudi romani. Part A also explained that a bill of exchange (“fede o sia dichiarazione di credito”) for 5,000 pesos had been issued by Propaganda Fide on behalf of Abbot Francesco Maroscelli Mariani, the cousin of Sabino, who had inherited his assets, and was receiving some of them from Propaganda Fide, while relinquishing 1,300 pesos in support of the missions.Footnote 24 Mariani’s bill of exchange was being sent to Don Francisco Rayo y Doria, Propaganda Fide agent in the Philippines, to be deposited in the Misericordia of Manila, and then transferred with other deposits to the “Cassa generale della Missione” in Canton, for a total of 16,360 pesos (including the sum in scudi romani mentioned above), some of which had to be paid to Mons. Mezzabarba and Matteo Ripa. Was a small sum added to the procurator’s “cassa” to reach the 811 pesos left to Perroni, remitted from Manila to Cerù before his departure, perhaps as a first instalment of a later larger transfer? Only further research could clarify that. What matters most here, however, is to appreciate the far-flung circulation of capital and the network of benefactors, from Rome and Naples all the way to Asia, as shown by the funds collected by the Venerable Congregation and Brethren of the Apostolic Mission of the Naples Cathedral.Footnote 25 We should also note that a large portion of the assets reserved for Propaganda Fide’s East Asian missions was deposited in Manila, where the annual interest yield on the capital, as mentioned in the Part A “Allocations,” was 16%. The main Propaganda Fide agent supervising these accounts was Don Francisco Rayo y Doria, who had been selected as a Propaganda Fide agent by Legate Tournon during his 1707 Manila stop, as we read in a 1717 letter by Tournon to the cardinals of the Sacred Congregation:
… in Manila, … remittances are wont to come in the person of Doctor Don Francesco Rayo y Doria, then vicar general, and now commissioner of the Crusade; in the second place to Don Bartolomeo his brother, parish priest of the Spaniards in said city; and in the third place to General Don Michele d’Elorriaga, all three of whom are relatives of Field Master Don Tomaso d’Endaya, and persons of my satisfaction because of their integrity and the pleasure with which they have embraced this occasion of employing themselves in the service of the Sacred Congregation and the missionaries.Footnote 26
This passage illustrates the imbrication of Tournon and Propaganda Fide with the Manila ecclesiastical and military elite, and in particular with the circle of Tomás de Endaya, in order to financially support the mission. It also shows that multiple individuals were chosen as “agents-in-waiting,” in case of Rayo y Doria’s incapacitation or death, starting with his brother Bartolomé, then General Miguel de Elorriaga, then de Endaya himself. Don Francisco Rayo y Doria was a canon and governor in the chapter of the Manila Cathedral, doctor in utroque jure, treasurer of the Archdiocese, vicar general of the archbishop, and finally commissioner of the crusade, a position in an organisation that depended on the Consejo de Indias in Seville, initially aimed at collecting alms to fight the infidels, but which in practice had become an economic company handling the transmission of funds between Spain, New Spain, and the Philippines.Footnote 27 I could not find information on Don Bartolomé Rayo y Doria, Francisco’s brother, while I was able to trace a small number of letters written between 1712 and 1718 by General Don Miguel d’Elorriaga to Marcello Angelita, a member of Tournon’s entourage, showing that he continued to be informed and interested in the Propaganda Fide China mission, though some of the missives were requests for financial help after the loss of a frigate in 1713 en route to Macao, an episode that had left him impoverished and besieged by creditors.Footnote 28
Part B of the document (“Assets the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda Fide knows to own in Manila,” ff. 680r-v) clarifies that the financial assets that had partly contributed to the sums in Part A were invested both in Manila and Madras, India.Footnote 29 A total of 4,400 pesos had been left in Manila by Legate Tournon on his way to China in 1707, and invested through an annuity contract (censo) in real estate with a local Spanish military commander, Sargent José Aguirre and his associate Magdalena Gomez, under the supervision of Francisco Rayo y Doria, and with the obligation to celebrate masses for the debtor.Footnote 30 A sum of 2,000 pesos had been gifted and deposited in Manila’s Misericordia by Maestro de Campo (field master or chief of staff) Tomás de Endaya, an important personage in Philippine colonial society mentioned above, who became protector of Tournon during his stay in Manila and accompanied the legate with his own ship to Macao.Footnote 31 Finally, we find an annuity contract of 1,000 gold pagodas, with an interest of 7%, established in India by Abbot Giuseppe Ignazio Cordero, another member of the Tournon mission, whom the Portuguese had exiled from Macao to Madras on the Coromandel Coast.Footnote 32 There he worked as Propaganda Fide procurator between 1713 and 1720, and in that year he renewed an annuity private contract (probably already previously existing) with “Captain Francisco Hugonin,” to pay with its yield the rent of the Propaganda Fide residence for travelling missionaries in India, while any excess was destined for the procurator’s “cassa generale.” The original capital for the annuity came from the sale of a house donated to Propaganda Fide by Paulo de Sà, parish priest of Cuddalore near Madras.Footnote 33 The list in Part B was based on Propaganda Fide’s imperfect knowledge of these faraway investments in the fall of 1721, and the document closed by asking Cerù to obtain and send to Rome official documentation (copie pubbliche) for each of these assets, as well as for any other investment done in favour of the Sacred Congregation, a sign that the central administration did not possess these certifications, though was informed of the funds’ whereabouts. The Propaganda Fide leadership and their accountants in Rome desired “to confirm in authentic form the provenance of each investment, who had done it, where it was deposited, if there was any debt or limitation on it, how these capitals were employed, who was getting the yields, how these yields were distributed, and if all attached obligations had been satisfied.” In closing, the instruction emphasised that to make the papal Congregation aware of these and any future assets was in fact the top priority, “so that it might use them for the best aims and effectively, as decided in the meeting of 8 September 1721, […] and it also might keep record of the account where they are deposited, and ensure that the will of the benefactors (mente de’ benefattori) be respected.”Footnote 34 This was an attempt at asserting central Roman authority over these contracts and annuities, and between the lines an indirect expression of discontent on how financial matters had been managed in a lackadaisical manner until then, even by the faithful Cerù. As of now, I do not know whether Cerù was able to send or bring to Rome the contracts requested by the Sacred Congregation. From other materials in the archives, however, we know that recouping those investments was cumbersome and took years, sometimes involving the Spanish colonial and ecclesiastical bureaucracies, and the king himself. In the case of Mariani’s sum, for example, it took thirty years! Only in 1751, the year Cerù died, did King Ferdinand VI finally order the governor of the Philippines to pay off the entire sum to Propaganda Fide, following decades of petitions, legal wranglings with the Misericordia (since Mariani’s foundation had been illegally established by a foreign subject in the Spanish dominions), conflicting opinions by Dominican, Jesuit, and Franciscan theologians and ecclesiastics in Manila, and the unsuccessful intervention of the papal nuncio in Madrid.Footnote 35
Cerù spent the last three decades of his life (1723–1751) in Rome, in the Convent of San Lorenzo in Lucìna. While he had hoped to return to China after discharging his mission on behalf of Legate Mezzabarba, he was instead ordered by Propaganda Fide to remain in Rome as a resident “China expert,” with the newly created title of “Procurator generalis omnium missionum Orientalium in Urbe” (Roman general procurator of all Oriental missions).Footnote 36 It was in that role that in 1723 he prepared a practical proposal to the Sacred Congregation, entitled “Money that at the discretion of the Sacred Congregation may be added to the annual subsidies of our missionaries of China and Tonkin,” asking that the annual stipends of missionaries (congrua) be raised to meet the cost of living and the level of stipends that the religious orders under Portuguese and Spanish patronage issued to their China missionaries. He opened by stating that missionaries in China spent more than in other parts of the East Indies, because of the higher cost of living, the constant gifts needed to ingratiate themselves with local officials, and the lack of alms from Chinese Christians, too poor and not numerous enough to support them. Then he listed what the annual stipends and provisions were for the Jesuits (140 pesos each, plus common provisions and medical care), Franciscans (120, plus provisions and gifts for mandarins), Augustinians (150), Dominicans (140, plus provisions), and MEP priests (120, plus provisions and gifts for mandarins), and unfavourably compared them to those offered by Propaganda Fide:
Our missionaries of the Sacred Congregation … have until now received 100 pesos a year each, without any other provisions, which is not enough if they want to go to the missions and not be accompanied by others, avoiding toils in the vineyard of the Lord. Therefore, it is necessary… to give them each year 100 Roman scudi which are 125 pesos, in accordance with what was discussed in the Sacred Congregation in the year 1719 before the departure of Monsignor Patriarch [Mezzabarba] for China.
Thus, he calculated that the regular annual compensations of 6,530 pesos were to be increased to 7,145 pesos to pay nineteen Propaganda Fide missionaries in China, as well as two vicars apostolic and three priests in Tonkin, an annual increase of 615 pesos. Moreover, Cerù also added that the Propaganda Fide missionaries employed in artistic services at the imperial court needed to be provided with “galanterie di Europa,” i.e. European curios of modest cost, “in order to present them at least twice a year to that monarch and to mandarins, that is, on the Chinese New Year and on their birthdays in accordance with the customs of that nation.” He advised that Propaganda Fide should send such objects directly from Europe, to avoid for its procurator and missionaries paying exorbitant prices to purchase them from English and French merchants in Canton.Footnote 37
Cerù’s proposal was not accepted, and stingy Propaganda Fide continued to send one hundred pesos to its missionaries. Here I cannot expand on Cerù’s activities in his almost three decades as General Procurator “in Urbe.” I will rather conclude by quoting from a 1742 letter by Francesco Maria Guglielmi CRM (1715–1772; in China 1740–64; procurator 1750–61), whose tenure as procurator shows that accounting could be used to feign compliance from East Asia, while in fact unaccounted funds were being diverted for private use, with little recourse left for Rome. In 1742, Guglielmi – a man in his late twenties still lacking experience and barely two years after his arrival in Macao, where the procurator had moved from Canton in 1732 – decided to bypass his elderly superior, Procurator Miralta, writing instead directly to Cerù in Rome, probably savouring the perspective that one day he would become procurator himself. Moreover, rather than addressing him as a Propaganda Fide official, Guglielmi deliberately chose to send his letter privately to Cerù as a confrère in the same religious order, the only man whom he deemed in a position to convince the Sacred Congregation to increase the procurator’s administrative budget and staff. He slyly asked his Roman superior to pass on the letter to his acquaintance, the pro-secretary of Propaganda Fide Carlo Uslenghi, “to whom I pray to communicate the present letter, and to greet him most cordially on my behalf.” However, it is unlikely that Cerù would have taken the letter seriously and passed it on to the Sacred Congregation’s leadership, as it was a rather shameful and disrespectful dispatch, full of self-commiseration and indirect complaints against Miralta, the city of Macao, and the Chinese people living there, revealing a personality greedy for material comfort, and ultimately disloyal to his immediate superior. I surmise that for this reason his letter may only have survived in one copy among Cerù’s personal papers.Footnote 38 Guglielmi’s section on staff and financial needs started as follows:
Let us move on to another piece of news, which I must report to you to my great regret, but that necessity forces me to give you. I would have liked in truth for it to be given to you by someone else, that is, by Fr. Miralta, but I was unable to obtain that from him [underlined in original]. The news is that the poor procurator cannot live in this city with only the provision of 100 pesos, as the current times are not what they once were, that is, when you Fr. Cerù were in China. How does this little piece of news sound to you?Footnote 39
He went on to say that such “news” would have certainly been “deeply resented” by Propaganda Fide, but that if he had remained silent, he was going to suffer the consequences once he became a procurator himself (which would not happen for another eight years, by Miralta’s decision!). In his view, the procurator needed a large increase in stipend, at least doubling it to two hundred pesos per year, to hire five servants for the procurator’s office: a cook; a buyer (“spenditore”) for the market, who would also do domestic work; a local Macanese in clerical habit as a chaperon, to avoid being harassed when walking around; and then another two servants to do all kinds of chores for the procurator and the occasional visiting missionaries, especially in the period between the beginnings of July and January, when the need to dispatch mail and manage arrivals and departures by ship was most acute. What if a servant fell sick? In that case these two extra hires would have been the substitutes. Why five members of staff? “Because” –Guglielmi facetiously maintained– “these blessed Chinese are so good, that they are good for nothing, as Your Reverence well knows; and where in Europe one is enough for ten people, here ten is not enough for one!” He calculated that the expenses for room, board, and stipends for the five servants alone would amount to ninety-seven taels of silver per year. Feeding the procurator was going to cost more than Cerù had experienced decades earlier, Guglielmi maintained: “You will see if China enjoys now that plenty [cuccagna] that it enjoyed in your days, Fr. Cerù, you who told me in Rome that a hen was only worth in China two or three baiocchi, maybe less.” Guglielmi calculated that for bread, pork, fish, eggs, and fruit the daily expense amounted to one mas and one condorin and a half, for a total of forty taels of silver annually. After complaining about the poor quality of the eggs and the local pork available at the market, “which makes me nauseated only by looking at it,” he blurted: “Be charitable! Do we have to drink water as if we were horses? Even Saint Paul told his beloved disciple Timotheus utere modico vino propter stomacum!” He went on to compare the meagre ration of wine available to him in Macao to the carafes filled with wine in Italian religious refectories: “The carafe that in Rome would not last one day to a cleric in San Lorenzo in Lucìna, I assure you, would last me six days here, or even more!” The expenses for European wine, some spices such as cinnamon and pepper to make the insipid local food tastier, rice, clothes, tablecloths, napkins, bed sheets, and laundry fees would amount to another ten taels per year. In conclusion, he repeated, one hundred pesos were absolutely insufficient, especially given the unfavourable rate of exchange between pesos and taels in recent times (one hundred pesos to seventy-four taels).Footnote 40
This lamentation prefigured shortcomings in character that led to a difficult procuratorship for Guglielmi. While Guglielmi was in charge for over a decade (1750–1761), in Josef Metler’s words, “his term of office was not very happy.”Footnote 41 Metzler attributed the poor performance of Guglielmi to the fact that he had to take over other vacant administrative posts, and that he was therefore ineffective as procurator. He was eventually removed by Propaganda Fide with the arrival of Emiliano Palladini in October 1761, when, after decades in the hands of the Clerics Regular Minor, the position was transferred to members of the new Congregation of the Holy Family established by Matteo Ripa at the Collegio de’ Cinesi in Naples for the education of Chinese native priests. Palladini had a letter of instructions issued by the prefect and the secretary, ordering Guglielmi to pass on the procurator’s papers to him and leave Macao for Italy at the first opportunity. However, Guglielmi resisted, delaying the transfer of documents, and leaving only in 1764, after receiving a stern order from his superior general. In a report to Propaganda Fide, Palladini related what might have been the real causes of Guglielmi’s reluctance to leave:
Father Guglielmi has not celebrated mass for several years, except on the days of Easter, Pentecost, and Christmas of the Lord. This is considered very astonishing here. When Vicar Apostolic Pallas came to this city, he made every effort to induce him to celebrate more often; but Father Guglielmi did not make any amends, always answering that he could not, because of some unknown bodily incapacitation, which he suffers in the act of celebrating. He bought some years ago a very large house under the name of a woman, bastard daughter of a Portuguese knight. This woman inhabits that house in the company of other unknown persons, and two little girls bought by Guglielmi from gentiles, and there Guglielmi has his meals. People here gossip about this conduct without decorum, and I even heard of it from a Lutheran in Canton, in the presence of many, to my great shame.Footnote 42
It is likely that Guglielmi had bought the large house with funds from the procurator’s office, to accommodate a woman who was conceivably in a sentimental relationship with him. As a priest he was thus possibly breaking his chastity vows, living in apparent concubinage with a sort of “family,” including two little enslaved girls he had bought, while failing to perform his religious duties except for a few times a year. Considering Guglielmi’s attitude towards food, wine, and money expressed in his 1742 letter to Cerù, this scenario is not improbable. Returning to the dynamics of control between the Roman centre and the East Asian missions, here we see how the far-flung outpost of Macao could become a place to resist Rome’s attempts at monitoring, giving to a rogue procurator the space to embezzle funds and conduct himself against clerical rules.
Conclusion: From Canton to Rome, and Back
I close my essay as I opened it, hoping to have shown, albeit in a preliminary fashion, how the management of the economic and logistical mechanisms of the missionary machine was an attempt to direct and control the missions from afar, used both by the Sacred Congregation in Rome and by the procurators in Macao-Canton over the inland stations. The relationships between the Propaganda Fide Congregation in Italy, the procurators in China, and the general procurator “in Urbe,” highlight how accounting and financial reports expressed power dynamics, but also evasion from control. I do not have space here to consider how individual inland missionaries related to the procurator and to Rome, though the archives are also rich in this respect. The economic system supporting the missionary enterprise in East Asia, one of the most distant from Rome, relied mainly on silver shipped from Europe, the Philippines, or the Americas; loans from Asian and European merchants or religious institutions; the spogli from deceased missionaries; real estate and agricultural rents in China, the Philippines, and India; charitable donations from European and Chinese patrons, and funds deposited in obras pías in Manila. These assets were vital for sustaining missions in such a remote region.
However, financial management was not without its challenges. In the seventeenth century, direct ecclesiastical involvement in commerce, particularly the Jesuit silk trade between Macao and Nagasaki, became contentious. By the eighteenth century, such participation was discouraged, reflecting a broader shift in Church policy. To navigate these complexities, the strategic decision to station a procurator in Canton was made, a move that placed him at the heart of global trade under Qing jurisdiction. Canton’s strategic importance was multifaceted. As a major commercial hub, it enabled the procurator to engage effectively with a wide range of stakeholders, including merchants, Qing officials, Portuguese authorities in Macao, and Spanish agents in Manila. This positioning facilitated efficient networking and intelligence gathering, essential for effective management.
Despite these strategic advantages, tension between Rome and its representatives in Asia persisted. The central authority in Rome occasionally bristled at the actions of the Propaganda Fide procurators and China inland missionaries. Communication delays and bureaucratic inertia in Rome hindered decision-making and fund distribution, creating strife between central and local authorities. These challenges were compounded by competition from well-established orders like the Jesuits, Augustinians, and Franciscans, who operated under the patronage of Spanish and Portuguese colonial powers. The diversity of missionaries under the Propaganda Fide’s jurisdiction further complicated the situation. Moreover, the mix of nationalities and orders sometimes led to internal conflicts, necessitating the procurator’s role in maintaining control through disciplinary and financial oversight. This control extended to addressing misconduct, such as embezzlement or moral failings, often involving the recall of the culprits to Europe.Footnote 43
Financial management thus became a key tool for both Rome and the procurators in asserting control over the missions. The authority over financial resources allowed them to exercise pressure or offer incentives from afar. However, the system also provided space for resistance to Roman authority, as evidenced by instances of fund mismanagement. The financial documents of the procurators highlight both the efforts to maintain central control and the strategies local actors employed to survive economically. A case in point is Francesco Maria Guglielmi’s tenure as procurator. His misuse of funds and personal misconduct illustrate how the distance from Rome and the false information he probably fed to his superiors permitted certain behaviours to go unchecked.
In summary, the economic and logistical frameworks sustaining Propaganda’s East Asian undertakings were intricate and heavily reliant on global networks of trade, finance, and ecclesiastical backing. The strategic positioning of the procurator in Canton, amidst tensions between the central authority and local realities, highlights the complex dynamics of governance, resistance, and survival within the missionary enterprise. These economic mechanisms not only served as tools for maintaining order but also laid bare both the vulnerabilities and adaptability of the system. To better comprehend the global missionary activities of Propaganda Fide, the interplay of fiscal, political, and religious factors reflected in the procurators’ documentation warrants further future exploration, including investigation of the socioeconomic networks behind specific initiatives, the role of local agents, and the broader implications for the missions. Sub spe futuri studii.
Acknowledgements
My gratitude goes to Christian Windler, Felicita Tramontana and Hélène Vu Thanh for inviting me to join the conference “Accounting Practices and Religious Orders in Missionary Territories,” Rome, 24-25 January 2024, and for their editorial support; to Isabel Pina of the Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau in Lisbon, co-organizer with me of the workshop “Managing the Missions in East Asia,” Lisbon, 23 May 2024; and to François Gipouloux, CNRS Paris (emeritus), for his suggestions.
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