In this study of the transformation of funerary rituals among Chinese Christians in the seventeenth century, the metaphor of interweaving looms large. Nicolas Standaert examines the early century of encounters between European Christian (mostly Jesuit) missionaries and native Chinese converts, in which strands from both cultural traditions were woven together to form a new type of funerary ritual fabric, dominated neither by the warp of Christian theological intentions, nor by the weft of Chinese practice alone. The great strength of this study is its careful and methodical assessment of a wide range of Chinese and European sources, emphasizing the gradual processes through which the parameters of new, hybrid customs were negotiated in texts and in practice. Beyond focusing on cultural interweaving, Standaert also undertakes to marry two distinct methodological approaches in this book, embedding a deep hermeneutic tradition of close textual analysis within a more broadly applicable sociological framework.
Early European Jesuits were both fascinated and affronted by the pomp and circumstance of native Chinese funerals, endlessly detailing the material circumstances of tombs, coffins, mourning clothes, processions, and the condolence rites of mourners in what Standaert calls “proto-ethnographic” descriptions. Though at first missionaries hewed to a strict line of separation between Christian and Chinese rituals, wishing to preserve the austerity and purity of European Christian traditions, they later felt the need (particularly after a period of exile in Canton from 1666 to 1671) to conform more publicly to Chinese expectations, demonstrating that Christians were not stingy and, by extension, unfilial in their funerary arrangements. Such modifications were themselves later recodified in new missionary texts for Chinese convert audiences as standard liturgical practice. These cross-cultural texts, written by missionaries in Chinese for Chinese audiences, such as Guilio Aleni's Questions and Answers Regarding the West (Xifang dawen, 1637), are among the more fascinating sources discussed in the book. They provide a window onto Europeans' perceptions of their own cultural practices, as well as the ways in which they wished to present themselves to elite Chinese society.
Though Standaert does not deal at length with the Rites Controversy here, his work adds a strong counterpoint to such scholarship by providing a dynamic picture of the ritual life of ordinary Chinese Christian communities, instead of focusing solely on European theological debates. The most surprising examples of funerary rituals in this study come from the few recorded funerals of actual Chinese Christians, as opposed to the descriptions of more elaborate funerals for imperial family members or Jesuit missionaries. For their part, early Chinese Christians, such as Xu Guangqi (1562–1633) and Yang Tingyuan (1562–1627), may have rejected explicitly Buddhist and Taoist practices of engaging ritual specialists, but they also made sure that funerary arrangements for their parents adhered to the emblematic Confucian prescriptive text on funerary practices, Zhu Xi's Family Rituals.
Chinese Christians creatively adapted traditional funerary rituals to accommodate their newly adopted belief system, such as bowing and prostrating before a crucifix, instead of the funerary portrait of a parent alone; distributing food offerings to the poor as alms, instead of eating the offerings oneself as a mourner; or substituting a rosary for Buddhist prayer beads in a posthumous portrait. Such adaptations made these elements of traditional Chinese funerary rituals more palatable to missionary observers, who accepted them as distinct cultural inflections or “civil” traditions. Other practices, such as the burning of paper money offerings, could not be so doctrinally transformed and were considered “superstitious” and not to be tolerated.
Though Standaert attempts to address the general phenomenon of intercultural interactions in the last chapter of his study, there may be limits to the broader applicability of interweaving as a sociological framework, which the author acknowledges. Seventeenth-century interactions between European Christians and Chinese occurred, as Standaert notes, almost entirely on Chinese terms, in the Chinese language. This delicate fabric of intercultural interaction in the early modern period—woven in what seems to have been a bloodless and genteel universe—was violently rent asunder in the nineteenth century. Early modern European missionaries may have accommodated the cultural mores of their Chinese hosts out of some combination of sheer necessity and genuine admiration, but later nineteenth-century missionaries felt no such compunction, as the balance of power had dramatically shifted in their favor.
This limited applicability does not, however, diminish Standaert's thoughtful contribution to our deeper understanding of the intimate negotiations of seventeenth-century Chinese–European interactions. The book will appeal broadly to researchers who are interested in intercultural relations, as well as those focusing on religion in China or late imperial culture. The numerous illustrations of tombs, mourning clothes, and funerary processions will captivate general audiences.
