The Qing empire under Kangxi (r. 1661–1722) saw the peak of the Chinese Rites Controversy (c.1643–1724), a dispute centred on the practices of Chinese Roman Catholics regarding Confucian offering rites and the proper translation of ‘God’. Remarkably, it was not the political or cultural elites who first spoke out to defend the practice of Chinese ancestral offering rites. Instead, fourteen Chinese Roman Catholic laypeople, despite their marginal political and social status, emerged as the earliest Chinese individuals committed to writing in defence of these rites. Among them, Xia Dachang (d. 1698) drew exhaustively upon the Confucian ‘Book of Rites’ (Liji) to argue that the rites of ancestral offerings were compatible with Roman Catholic beliefs.Footnote 1
This article aims to offer a new perspective on the Chinese Rites Controversy. Scholars such as Li Tiangang, Huang Yi-nong and Wu Liwei have pioneered the study of Chinese perspectives during the Controversy, while Po-chia Hsia’s observations on ethnographic authority have highlighted the competition among missionaries during the Controversy for expertise in matters of Chinese religion and culture. Nicolas Standaert, meanwhile, has made groundbreaking contributions by examining multi-level interactions within early modern Christian communities and the exchange of knowledge about Chinese rites between China and Europe.Footnote 2 In building on their work, this article draws attention to some previously overlooked facets. It reconsiders Xia Dachang’s views on ancestral offering rites by introducing a new approach that investigates the role of the human body in the Neo-Confucian framework, uncovering differing perceptions of human existence in the Western and Chinese traditions, and the inseparability of internal morality (filial piety) from external materiality (bodily presence and actions).
Filial Piety, the Qing Empire and the Chinese Rites Controversy
During the last four decades of the seventeenth century, Emperor Kangxi navigated a period of significant political uncertainty, eventually solidifying his rule over China proper where Han Chinese predominated. In the late seventeenth century, Kangxi faced a dual challenge: resistance from Manchu elites who vehemently opposed the sinicized political reforms introduced by his father, Emperor Shunzhi, and a series of uprisings in southern China, where the Manchu occupation had been met with strong opposition from the Chinese populace. In response, after ascending to the throne in 1667 and neutralizing Oboi (1610–69), a significant threat to his rule, Kangxi distanced himself from those Manchu elites who opposed the integration of Chinese elements into Manchu traditions. Instead, he strategically adopted a Confucian persona to mitigate the Chinese elites’ antipathy toward their Manchu rulers. He authorized the commentary of Zhu Xi (1126–1271) and his school of Neo-Confucianism as state orthodoxy, writing that ‘Master Zhu epitomised the study of Confucian Classics, carried on the lost knowledge of Confucianism, enlightened us, and established the norm for the next billions of generations.’Footnote 3 In 1670, Kangxi’s Sacred Edict, emphasizing Confucian principles, notably placed the maxim that ‘Highly esteemed filial piety and brotherly submission to give due weight to social relations’ at the forefront of its sixteen state policy directives.Footnote 4
Emperor Kangxi initially welcomed the growing number of European Roman Catholic missionaries in China, expressing his acceptance of them in the 1692 Edict of Toleration, which commended the Roman Catholic missionaries for not causing disturbances in the provinces. Furthermore, Kangxi commended Matteo Ricci (1552–1610), who arrived in China in the early 1580s, for his strategy of cultural accommodation. This approach, aimed at adapting Roman Catholicism to fit with Confucianism, became known as ‘the rules of Matteo Ricci’.Footnote 5 However, a century later this attempt at a reconciliation of traditions faced a decisive setback in 1693, when Charles Maigrot (1652–1730), the head of Chinese missions and vicar apostolic in Fujian province, issued the Interdict, which banned Chinese Christians from practising Confucian ancestral rites, including rituals such as offering sacrifices to express reverence and love for the deceased. This ban was further reinforced in 1704 by Pope Clement XI (1649–1721), who condemned these rites and prohibited further debate on the matter. In reaction, Kangxi, in 1721, outlawed any missionary work that did not adhere to Ricci’s approach and openly criticized Pope Clement XI’s decree, stating that: ‘It is impossible to reason with them [Western missionaries] because they do not understand larger issues as we understand them in China. There is no single Westerner versed in Chinese works, and their remarks are often incredible and ridiculous’.Footnote 6 In 1724, Kangxi’s successor, Yongzheng, formally proscribed Roman Catholicism in China, and missionary work was significantly restricted there until 1858.Footnote 7
Given the prioritization of Confucian teachings in Qing statecraft and the emperors’ close surveillance of Roman Catholic missions in China, one might expect significant defences of ancestral offering rites from the Chinese political or cultural elite. However, Qing officials and the Chinese cultural elite were largely absent from these discussions. Instead, the debate was taken up by fourteen Chinese Roman Catholic laymen on the fringes of political and social power.Footnote 8 Among them, Xia Dachang, the most academically qualified, who had passed the basic civil service examination but lacked the credentials for an official position. Despite their lack of government roles or recognition as influential scholars, these individuals became the first Chinese voices in the dispute, authoring, in response to a request from the Jesuit missionaries, no fewer than twenty-eight treatises defending the practice of ancestral offering rites.Footnote 9
The lack of involvement of the Chinese elite in the controversy surrounding ancestral offering rites is a complex issue that requires further exploration. One reason might be that the emperors had already provided an official, definitive position on the Confucian Rites Controversy, leading the elites, especially non-Catholics, to refrain from getting involved. Insights into this lack of elite participation can be found in the writings of the fourteen Chinese Roman Catholics, who faced dual pressures: local societal pressure to adhere to Confucian rites; and opposition from some European Roman Catholic missionaries, who viewed these Chinese religious practices as heterodox. In Fujian province, for example, Chinese Roman Catholics were even barred from confession due to the ongoing controversy, leading them to urgently request that Roman Catholic missionaries acknowledge the legitimacy of Chinese rites.Footnote 10
Western Missionaries’ Interpretation of Chinese Traditions
In the course of the Controversy, the Jesuits grappled with a significant dilemma: balancing cultural accommodation with doctrinal fidelity. Matteo Ricci viewed Confucianism as a beneficial moral system for governing the empire, with ancestral rites expressing love, gratitude and filial piety, rather than superstition.Footnote 11 He noted that the Chinese, according to Confucian classics, did not see the deceased as gods, nor did they pray to them or expect favours.Footnote 12 Indeed, he saw ancestral rites as originally civil ceremonies which had become tainted by superstitious beliefs from Buddhism and Daoism.Footnote 13 To counter the materialist and atheist philosophy of Neo-Confucianism,Footnote 14 Ricci argued that if body and soul were extinguished at death, ancestral rites would be empty gestures.Footnote 15 Using the scholastic-Aristotelian distinction between vegetative, sensitive and rational souls (shenghun, juehun and linghun), he explained that while the first two cease to exist at death, the rational soul is immortal.Footnote 16 The soul cannot move freely between worlds, as ‘the Lord of Heaven has created all things, each with its designated place’, so any return of an ancestor’s soul must be by divine will.Footnote 17 Ricci suggested that instead of traditional rites, it would be preferable for Chinese believers to transform these practices into acts of charity to the poor, thereby comforting the souls of their ancestors.Footnote 18
Later Jesuit missionaries generally followed the framework established by Ricci.Footnote 19 Francesco Saviero Filippucci (1632–92) further emphasized that the reason for offering sacrifices was simply love. Out of love, offerings are arranged, kneeling occurs, incense is burned, wine is offered, candles are lit, and the family mourns together to demonstrate filial respect.Footnote 20 Another Jesuit missionary, Giulio Aleni (1582–1649), even suggested integrating Christian elements into these Confucian rites, such as placing a cross at the ritual site, dedicating offerings to God before the ancestors, praying to God during the rites, or giving the offerings to the needy instead of presenting them to ancestors.Footnote 21
The Jesuits initially adopted a policy of accommodation, interpreting these rites as cultural rather than religious, thereby not conflicting with Roman Catholic teachings. However, this stance was not universally accepted within the Roman Catholic Church. Other missionary groups, notably the Dominicans and Franciscans, viewed these practices as idolatrous and in direct violation of Roman Catholic doctrine.
Dominican missionaries, in contrast to the Jesuits, rejected ancestral offering rites outright. In 1643, Juan Bautista Morales (1597–1664) reported to Pope Innocent X (1574–1655) his observations of these rites, detailing the sacrifices, timing, prayer content, decoration and arrangement of the sacrifice site, and the role of a ritual host akin to a priest.Footnote 22 While acknowledging the participants’ expression of gratitude to their ancestors, Morales noted that they also prayed for blessings such as health, longevity and good harvests.Footnote 23 However, unlike the Jesuits, he did not differentiate between the original Confucian practices and those influenced by local religions. Crucially, Morales pointed out that participants believed the souls of their ancestors were present on the tablets to receive sacrifices, leading him to label the rites as blasphemous and ‘illicit’.Footnote 24
Francisco Varo (1627–87), another Dominican friar, conducted a more thorough study of Chinese ancestral offering rites based on Zhu Xi’s commentary, which Emperor Kangxi had made an official civil service examination text. Varo also concluded that these rites were fundamentally flawed because they revered ancestors (seen as ‘fake masters’) with rituals intended for blessings and sacrifices.Footnote 25 Varo argued that these rites should be considered blasphemous, as all offerings should be reserved for the one true God.Footnote 26 More importantly, however, Varo referenced Zhu Xi (1130–1200), the prominent Neo-Confucian (daoxue) philosopher, who had stated that the ritual participants’ qi (vital energy flow) could connect with the ancestor’s qi. Therefore, if one could show reverence with all sincerity, as Varo interpreted the matter, the ancestor’s soul would be present on the tablet on which their name was inscribed.Footnote 27 Thus, Varo proclaimed, while expressing filial piety through actions such as weeping or the cleaning and tidying of tombs was permissible, offering more elaborate rites was both unacceptable and unnecessary, as no one would perform such rituals for their living parents.Footnote 28 In making this critique, Varo equated the Chinese word qi with soul.
In the Interdict, Charles Maigrot, relying on Dominican works on Chinese rites during the Controversy, unequivocally declared Chinese ancestral offering rites to be idolatrous, branding any missionary acceptance of these practices as ‘tolerance of evil’.Footnote 29 He criticized the Confucian ‘Book of Rites’ (Liji) in particular, cautioning missionaries against teaching it to avoid instilling ‘atheism and various superstitions’ in their students.Footnote 30 Maigrot’s strong condemnation of both Confucian rites and teachings asserted their incompatibility with Christianity.Footnote 31 However, unlike Varo, he did not substantiate his claims with references from the Confucian classics or other scholarly studies. This approach was to be criticized in Emperor Kangxi’s 1721 decree, which expressed frustration with Western missionaries for criticizing Chinese traditions without thoroughly understanding or investigating them.Footnote 32
Xia Dachang: Bridging Confucianism and Roman Catholicism
Xia Dachang, a licentiate from Jiangxi province who held a basic degree from the civil service examination but had no prospect of office, served as a Chinese assistant to the French Jesuit missionary Adrien Greslon (1618–96). Xia authored three treatises offering a comprehensive discussion of the ancestral rites. His writings, along with those of contemporaries such as Li Jiugong and Yan Mo, responded to questions posed by Jesuit missionaries, thus creating dialogues between Chinese believers and Western missionaries.Footnote 33 These texts, particularly those written around the time of Maigrot’s 1693 Interdict, suggest a period of active engagement and debate over cultural and religious practices.
On the basis of Zhu Xi’s commentary, Varo dismissed ancestral offering rites and Maigrot condemned the rites and the Confucian classic Liji. In contrast, Xia Dachang’s three treatises, authored in around 1698, sought to refute their views through an extensive study of Liji. Footnote 34 Xia’s aim was to reconcile Chinese traditions with Roman Catholic beliefs, highlighting filial piety (xiao) as a common value in both. He insisted that the discussion on ancestral offering rites should be rooted in their original Confucian meaning. Xia’s analysis of the Liji asserted that these rites were driven by humanity, morality and social order, rather than a desire to seek blessings from ancestors.Footnote 35 He explained that they originated from the profound grief experienced upon a parent’s death, with the rites serving as a way to continue honouring parents posthumously.Footnote 36 Xia questioned the belief in ancestors’ bestowing blessings or causing disasters, citing Zhu Xi – a state orthodoxy prevalent among intellectuals in his era – to support his argument that the rites were about serving and respecting ancestors, not seeking their protection.Footnote 37
Xia Dachang argued that while the Liji mentions blessing associated with practising ancestral offering rites, in Confucianism, these ‘blessings’ refer to a state of peace and harmony in all relationships achieved through cultivating filial piety.Footnote 38 Although the Liji states that ‘The sacrifices of such men have their own blessing’, Xia argued that one should not stop at this point but consider the following explanation:
[This is] not indeed what the secular culture calls a blessing. The blessing here means perfection. It is the name given to the bai shun [fulfilment of duties]. When nothing is left incomplete or improperly discharged, this is what we call perfection. Perfection implies completing everything that should be done in one’s internal self, and externally the performance of everything according to the proper way.Footnote 39
Thus, the blessings mentioned are not granted by departed ancestors but are the result of the ritual participant’s moral perfection and their fulfilling of internal (filial piety) and all necessary external (ritual performance) requirements.
Filial piety, as a key aspect of humanity, Xia went on, aligns with one’s internal self and exerts a moral influence that encourages respect for elders and authorities.Footnote 40 These rites enable individuals to demonstrate love and reverence towards their parents, reinforcing the concept of filial piety throughout society. Xia Dachang argued that consistently showing love and reverence to one’s ancestors teaches individuals how to maintain harmonious relationships with others.Footnote 41 He cited the Liji: ‘Among all methods of ensuring good conduct, rites are paramount, with sacrificial rites being the most critical’.Footnote 42 Xia contended that since ancient rulers prioritized sacrificial rites over legal systems for governance, these ancestral offering rites held an indispensable place in Chinese society and should not be lightly discarded.Footnote 43
Xia then pointed out how the purpose of these rites was to express and nurture filial piety, differentiating them from the Roman Catholic practice of offering sacrifices to God. He argued that these Confucian rites were essential not just for expressing humanity, but also for fostering morality, thus playing a key role in traditional Chinese ethical education and statecraft. The potential abolition of these rites could cause trouble, as it might be perceived as an attempt by Roman Catholics to undermine Chinese political and educational foundations.Footnote 44 He advised the Roman Catholic community to utilize this aspect of human nature to guide the Chinese people towards understanding the transcendent nature of God.Footnote 45 The purpose of ancestral rites in China, and the emphasis placed on them, lay in expressing and cultivating filial piety among descendants, a virtue that closely aligned with the ethical teachings of the Ten Commandments in the Bible.Footnote 46 The act of undertaking ancestor rites aimed to honour one’s roots and origins. If one traced the source of one’s ancestors, paying homage to and remembering them, then God would be recognized as the ultimate origin that humanity should honour and revere.Footnote 47
While he referenced Zhu Xi to argue that ancestral rites focused on respecting ancestors rather than seeking blessing, Xia, following Ricci, criticized Zhu Xi’s cosmology for denying a transcendent divine creator, and deemed this view most harmful to the Chinese.Footnote 48 Moreover, in order to claim that belief in the immortality of the soul could be found in the Confucian classics, Xia and other Chinese defenders of Confucian rites, along with the Jesuits, used the term linghun (rational soul) interchangeably with hun (a vital substance),Footnote 49 the original term found in the Liji, asserting that these ancestral souls were neither regarded as deities nor capable of freely traversing back to the human world without God’s permission.Footnote 50
However, like Varo, Xia and the pro-rites missionaries overlooked the fact that the Christian notion of the rational soul was absent from Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucianism, the state orthodoxy prevalent at the time. While they used Zhu Xi’s interpretation to argue that Confucian rites were non-idolatrous, they paradoxically dismissed Zhu’s understanding of qi as vital energy flow – the very rationale Zhu used to justify the rites as non-superstitious – in their attempt to prove the immortality of the soul in Confucianism.Footnote 51 They also neglected Zhu’s explanation that hun – which drives mental functions – and po – which contributes to the body’s physicality and senses – are vital substances generated by qi that together animate the human body and its faculties.Footnote 52 Despite this, Xia and the pro-rites missionaries still translated hun, derived from qi, as ‘soul’ and interchangeably employed the term linghun (rational soul). Yet, if qi and hun could be equated to the Christian rational soul, it became difficult to dismiss the anti-rites missionaries’ belief that Confucianism contained elements of superstition, given that the accepted reading of the Confucian classics is that they do not, as the pro-rites group argued, explicitly state that qi, hun or po cannot traverse freely or are subject to the Christian God. Conversely, if they could not be equated, how could one convince the Chinese that the Confucian classics supported belief in the immortality of the rational soul?
Although Xia and the Jesuit missionaries recognized filial piety as a core value of ancestral offering rites that aligned with Roman Catholic beliefs, they overlooked the deeper understanding that, in the Neo-Confucian context of their time, filial piety (as an internal morality) was inseparable from external materiality, namely, bodily presence and actions. According to Zhu Xi, descendants expressed filial piety through rites that reassembled the deceased’s hun and po by performing rituals with perceivable reverent love, as though the departed were still alive.Footnote 53 Zhu emphasized that while the existence of hun and po after death was a real aspect of the ritual process and not merely symbolic, they should not be considered ‘gods’ or ‘ghosts,’ as they are products of qi, the vital energy foundational to humans and the universe.Footnote 54 In short, physical participation in rites – through bodily presence and actions – was essential for embodying and cultivating intangible moral values such as love, reverence and filial piety.
To summarize, Xia Dachang and the pro-rites Jesuit missionaries argued for Confucian belief in the immortality of the soul, whereas anti-rites missionaries, including the Dominicans and the mission administrator Charles Maigrot, challenged Confucian belief in the soul’s presence in ancestral rites. Both sides recognized the importance of filial piety and its parallels with Roman Catholicism, yet they disagreed over the necessity of maintaining traditional ancestral offering rites. While Maigrot and the Dominican missionaries called for a complete ban on these rites, the Jesuits, as noted earlier, suggested reforming them by integrating them with Roman Catholic rituals. This Jesuit proposal reflects a shared concern about superstition with the Dominicans and Maigrot. However, Xia and the missionaries arguably failed to recognize the difficulties of accommodating Zhu Xi’s Neo-Confucianism to the Christian notion of the soul, nor did they fully acknowledge the interconnectivity between internal morality and external ritual in Confucian practices. The episode shows that, even when indigenous actors were fully involved in the process, accommodationist strategies on the peripheries of Christianity remained fraught with cultural difficulty.
Conclusion
The Chinese Rites Controversy was not only a pivotal moment in Sino-European relations but also offers important lessons for contemporary, twenty-first-century Confucian-Christian dialogue on cultural assimilation and religious tolerance. Re-evaluating the Controversy through the lens of the human body reveals a critical oversight by Xia Dachang and the Western missionaries: the differing perceptions of human existence in the two traditions and the inseparability of internal morality (filial piety) from external materiality (bodily presence and actions). This disconnect led to an underestimation of the need to appreciate and respect cultural differences.
Historically, the Controversy created a rift between the Qing state and the papacy, and it remains an unresolved issue. The challenge of reconciling Chinese identity with Christian beliefs is becoming increasingly contentious in China, prompting Sinophone scholars to call for a deeper exploration of this topic, given its ongoing relevance in the contemporary Chinese context. However, current studies have not significantly advanced beyond the seventeenth-century debates between Xia and the European missionaries on how to interpret the nature of Confucian offering rites.
The modern scholar of comparative religion, Chen Ming, has critiqued a long tradition of studies comparing Confucianism and Christianity: ‘Dialogues either became an abstract discussion of logic among texts or fell into the trap of finding and proving doctrinal similarities. While well-intentioned, these dialogues lost their foundation and have achieved little success’.Footnote 55 If progress is to be made, it is necessary to re-examine the historical script and seek to identify overlooked aspects in the centuries-long Confucian-Christian debate over ancestral rites. Such an approach could lead to a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the ‘other’. In the seventeenth-century Neo-Confucian context, the Qing state viewed ancestral offering rites as reflecting the interdependence between visible ritual performance and invisible moral values. Removing the external aspect of the ritual equates to disregarding the distinctive Chinese perspective on the nature of human beings and the development of a moral society. Acknowledging this distinctiveness might prove crucial in contemporary Confucian-Christian dialogue.
