The Chinese Rites Controversy

The quarrel was about the ceremonies with which the Chinese honoured Confucius and their dead. Some missionaries, Benedict XIV wrote in looking back, held these to be purely civil and allowed them to converts; others held that they smelled of superstition and could not be permitted (Benedict XIV, Ex quo singulari § 1). The Society of Jesus, by its own account, had long permitted them as merely political (see Matteo Ricci at the Court of Beijing) (Jesuits of Beijing, Brevis Relatio pp. 1–2).

Rome at first answered each side according to its description, as Benedict XIV himself said in reviewing the decrees (Benedict XIV, Ex quo singulari §§ 2–3). In 1645 it was told that governors offered sacrifice to Confucius in his temples, with animals, wine and incense, to obtain wisdom from him; it ruled that Christians could take no part (Propaganda Fide, decree of 12 September 1645 question 8). In 1656 it was told that scholars bowed to Confucius as pupils bow to a living teacher, in a hall that was a school and not a temple; it ruled that this could be allowed, as a cult that appeared merely civil and political (Holy Office, decree of 23 March 1656 question 3).

In March 1692 the Board of Rites, at the Kangxi emperor’s order, ruled that all the churches of the empire be left as they were and that anyone might go to them to worship (Kangxi, edict of 1692 order of 19 March and decision of the Board of Rites of 20 March 1692, in Le Gobien, pp. 181–185); the Jesuit Charles Le Gobien, who printed the text in French in 1698, says that the emperor confirmed it and gave it the force of law (Kangxi, edict of 1692 Le Gobien, p. 190). In 1700 the Jesuits at Beijing put their reading of the rites before him: Confucius is honoured as a teacher and is not asked for talent or office; the offerings to ancestors show love and gratitude; the sacrifices to Heaven are offered to the Lord of heaven and earth, not to the visible sky. The emperor answered that this was very well written and needed no correction (Jesuits of Beijing, Brevis Relatio pp. 8–11).

Clement XI decided otherwise. On 20 November 1704 he confirmed answers of the Holy Office that forbade the rites as tainted with superstition, and sent them to his visitor in China, Charles Maillard de Tournon, who published them there in 1707 (Benedict XIV, Ex quo singulari §§ 6 and 8, pp. 189–190). The constitution Ex illa die repeated the rulings in 1715: God is to be named “Tien Chu”, Lord of Heaven, and not “Tien” or “Xang Ti”; Christians may not preside, serve or be present at the solemn sacrifices to Confucius and to ancestors, though a merely passive presence, where enmity cannot otherwise be avoided, is not condemned (Benedict XIV, Ex quo singulari pp. 191–192, the text of Ex illa die).

Having read the proclamation, Kangxi wrote in 1721 that the Westerners did not understand Chinese matters and should no longer be allowed to preach in China (Kangxi, comment of 1721 excerpt). A second visitor, Carlo Ambrogio Mezzabarba, published a list of permissions at Macao that year (Benedict XIV, Ex quo singulari pp. 198–200, Mezzabarba’s pastoral letter); in 1742 Benedict XIV declared them void and confirmed Ex illa die (Benedict XIV, Ex quo singulari §§ 12 and 21–24, pp. 197 and 202; dating clause, p. 204).

In 1939 Propaganda Fide, with the approval of Pius XII, stated that certain ceremonies in the East, though once bound up with pagan rites, had come in the course of centuries to keep only a civil meaning. It allowed Catholics to attend the honours paid to Confucius and to bow before the dead and their tablets, and dispensed priests from the oath that Benedict XIV had imposed (Propaganda Fide, Plane compertum est AAS 32 (1940), pp. 24–26).